Seymour Topping, who chronicled the rise of China and the Cold War in Europe and Asia as a correspondent, shaped the crowning years of print journalism as an editor of The New York Times, and led the charge into the internet age in the classrooms of Columbia University, died Nov. 8 at White Plains (NY) Hospital. He was 98.

Mr. Topping enjoyed a career as a correspondent for wire services and The Times, as a foreign news editor and managing editor of the newspaper, subordinate only to the powerful executive editor A.M. Rosenthal, as a teacher and author of four books, and as one of America’s most respected journalists. “For Mr. Topping, known to colleagues as Top, the story was always about more than the day’s news developments, intriguing as they might be. It was about their historical significance, too,” The Times said.

Mr. Topping prized high standards of reporting and editing, which demanded fairness, objectivity and good taste in news columns free of editorial comment, political agendas, innuendo and unattributed pejorative quotations.