Sharon Otterman - The New York Times
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Portrait of Sharon Otterman

Sharon Otterman

Since joining The Times in 2008, I have mostly covered education, health and the pandemic, and religion in the New York City area. To each beat I have covered, I bring a desire to right wrongs, explain topics that are often misunderstood and explore concerns that might otherwise not be brought to public attention. I am guided by my curiosity, my editors and the many generous people who agree to speak with me and help me learn.

I grew up on Long Island and have a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Yale and a master’s in international relations from Columbia University. Before joining The Times, I lived in Egypt on a Fulbright fellowship, where I wrote articles about women, Islam and political reform.

In New York and Washington, I was an associate director at the Council on Foreign Relations, writing about foreign policy. In Kosovo, I directed a media development program for the U.S. State Department. In Slovakia, I was the managing editor of The Slovak Spectator, an English-language newspaper. I have also been a reporter at New York Newsday, the Riverdale Press, the Jersey Journal and U.P.I.

My international experience has served me well in New York, the most international of American cities. I can speak, with varying degrees of success, Spanish, French and Egyptian Arabic, and can effort the basics of Hebrew. But while immersing myself in the city’s many cultures brings me joy, even more than that, I like to have an impact. Two of my favorite examples: My reporting on the wrong man serving time for the 1990 murder of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi helped lead to the exposure of a corrupt detective and the exoneration of more than a dozen wrongfully convicted men. It also won a Polk Award for justice reporting. My interviews with men victimized by Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick helped lead to his resignation, as well as reforms in how the Roman Catholic Church deals with the sexual harassment of adults and seminarians.

I strive to be accurate, rigorous and empathetic in my work. I am grateful for the people who agree to share their expertise and emotions with me for each story I write. Without them, I could not do my job. I protect the identity of sources who put themselves at risk to share sensitive information with me, even as I take extreme care to gauge their credibility and try to verify or corroborate their claims. Read more here about how The Times deals with anonymous sources.

As a Times journalist, I share the values and adhere to the standards of integrity outlined in The Times’s Ethical Journalism Handbook. That means I don’t participate in political marches, accept gifts from sources or potential sources or make political contributions. On a broader level, I aim to approach each new subject with an open mind.

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