Add The New York Post on Google Rose Friedman, a longtime NPR journalist who co-created the network’s “Books We Love” reading guide, died of cancer at her New York City home at age 38.
Friedman passed away on Sept. 17 after a 15-year career at NPR — but not before making one last edit to her own obituary.
She had asked that the obituary prominently mention her work as a SAG-AFTRA shop steward and describe her “proudest achievement” as helping win expanded paid parental leave at NPR.
“Not the second line but still pretty high up in the story. Rose would understand,” NPR’s Elizabeth Blair wrote in the tribute.
Friedman started at NPR Books as an editorial assistant in 2010, when she was in her early 20s, and later moved into editing and reporting for the network’s Society & Culture desk, according to the broadcaster.
She later helped launch NPR’s Book Concierge, the annual recommendation project now known as “Books We Love,” where she helped narrow hundreds of staff and critic picks into the final guide.
“She was voracious,” novelist Meg Wolitzer, who worked with Friedman on NPR reviews and features, told the network.
“What a gifted, delightful, brilliant, deeply kind person. And I would say a true enthusiast. I got so much working with Rose.”
Her work ranged from editing book coverage, including the recurring “This Week’s Must Read,” to writing appreciations of figures such as Herman Wouk and publisher Sonny Mehta.
Colleagues said Friedman prized skepticism and substance, often pushing back on stories she thought were driven more by buzz than reporting.
“She would care more about ‘Was this true?’ or as holistic as we could get than, ‘Is it buzzy?'” former NPR supervising editor Theo Balcomb, now a senior editor at The Atlantic, told NPR.
In 2020, Friedman became NPR’s lead reporter covering the sexual assault trial of former movie executive Harvey Weinstein. The victims’ testimony haunted her, according to her obit.
She also worked on NPR’s #MeToo coverage and shared second place in the 2018 National Headliner Awards with Blair and editor-producer Ellen Silva for the feature “Women Are Speaking Up About Harassment And Abuse, But Why Now?”
Near the end of her career, Friedman took a leading role in NPR’s America 250 project.
The journo grew up in Newton, Mass., and studied labor history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., where her research on worker solidarity across ethnic lines on Minnesota’s Iron Range won the Barbara Wertheimer Prize in Labor History.
Her interest in labor issues also surfaced at NPR, where she became active in the newsroom union.
Friedman and correspondent Tom Dreisbach served on the SAG-AFTRA committee that successfully pushed the broadcaster to increase paid parental leave.
“Rose’s thought was, ‘let’s go big,'” Dreisbach recalled.
Friedman is survived by her partner and their two children, her parents, Carolyn and Jerry Friedman, and her sisters, Sophie and Nina.
