Seymour Topping (born December 11, 1921) is a highly accomplished and experienced journalist, editor, writer, and educator.
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Topping was born in New York on December 11, 1921, and was married to photojournalist, documentary filmmaker, and author Audrey Ronning Topping on November 10, 1948. They have five children, four of whom were born abroad while either one or both Toppings were on assignment.
Following military service as an infantry officer in the Pacific during World War II, he joined the Associated Press in 1948 as a foreign correspondent in China and Southeast Asia. He joined The New York Times Company in 1959, and during his 33-year tenure held positions such as chief correspondent in both Moscow and Southeast Asia, foreign editor, managing editor, and director of editorial development.
During his career, Topping covered pivotal historical events all over the world including the Chinese Revolution and the French Indochina War, and he reported from countries and regions including China, Vietnam, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Tibet, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Iran, South Africa, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Australia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador.
He has also served in various administrative capacities, including President of the International Advisory Board of the School of Journalism at Tsinghua University, President of Emeritus Professors In Columbia, President of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and Chairman of the ASNE's Committee on International Communication. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society, the Century Association, and the National Committee on United States-China Relations.
He taught and lectured at Columbia University as the SanPaolo Professor of International Journalism until 2002 and is now an emeritus professor. He also served as Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes at Columbia from 1993 to 2002.
Topping is the author of the books. On the Front Lines of the Cold War: An American Correspondent's Journal from the Chinese Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam (Louisiana State University Press, 2010), Journey Between Two Chinas, The Peking Letter: A Novel of the Chinese Civil War, and Fatal Crossroads: A Novel of Vietnam 1945. Some of his articles and those of his wife make up part of the book The New York Times Report from Red China.