Goodman worked as a researcher and reporter for Newsweek magazine between 1963 and 1965, and has worked as an associate editor at the Boston Globe since 1967.

In 1998, Goodman received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College.

She has compared "anthropogenic warming deniers" to Holocaust deniers.

Goodman announced her retirement in her final column, which ran on January 1, 2010.

Goodman was born in Newton, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of Jacob Holtz and Edith Weinstein Holtz, and is the sister of architecture critic and author Jane Holtz Kay. Goodman graduated (cum laude) from Radcliffe College in 1963 with a degree in modern European history. She married her first husband Anthony Goodman in 1963 and gave birth to their daughter Katie in 1968. After their divorce, she married her second husband, journalist Bob Levey in 1982.

Co-author, with Patricia O'Brien: