Ellen Goodman, a syndicated columnist and associate editor of The Boston Globe, is the 1998 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Fellow. She will receive the 46th Lovejoy award for journalism at a formal convocation on November 12 at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, Colby President William R. Cotter announced. The award is presented annually to honor an important voice in contemporary journalism and the memory of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, an 1826 Colby graduate who was America's first martyr to freedom of the press.

As the Lovejoy Fellow, Goodman will receive an honorary degree and deliver the annual Lovejoy address at 8 p.m. on Thursday, November 12, in Lorimer Chapel at Colby. The convocation is open to the public.

The Lovejoy fellow is chosen by a committee of distinguished newspaper editors chaired by Bill Kovach, director of The Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. "This year's Lovejoy award honors the integrity, craftsmanship and character that Ellen Goodman has demonstrated in her work," Kovach said. "During a time of confusion and bitterness brought about by broad social and political change, Ms. Goodman's has been a quiet, intelligent, persistent voice appealing to reason. Her voice like that of Elijah Parish Lovejoy has been devoted to finding the common ground without which a civil society cannot exist."

A Boston Globe columnist syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group for more than 20 years, Goodman won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in 1980. She received the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award in 1988 and the National Women's Political Caucus President's Award in 1993. She has published five books of essays, most recently Value Judgments (1993), as well as a book on social change, Turning Points (1979). She spent a semester at Stanford University as the inaugural Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Professional Journalism in 1996. Goodman is a cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College and spent 1973-74 at Harvard University as a Nieman fellow.

The Lovejoy Award is named for Elijah Parish Lovejoy, a native of Albion, Maine, and an 1826 graduate of Colby. He was slain Nov. 7, 1837, in Alton, Ill., defending his abolitionist newspaper against a pro-slavery mob. Colby established the award in 1952 for an editor, reporter or publisher who has contributed to the nation's journalistic achievement. Besides Kovach the selection committee includes Jane Healy, managing editor of the Orlando Sentinel; William Hilliard, former executive editor of The Oregonian; Ann Marie Lipinsky, managing editor of The Chicago Tribune, Matthew V. Storin, editor of The Boston Globe; Lawrence Pugh, chair of Colby's board of trustees; and Cotter.

Last year's Lovejoy award was presented to David Halberstam. Previous recipients include Katharine Graham and David Broder of The Washington Post, John Kifner and Anthony Lewis of The New York Times, the late Murray Kempton of New York Newsday and the late Robert Maynard of The Oakland Tribune.