should be congratulated, or do you feel like you should be given a cool Four years ago, when I started thinking about how the Times had to He went to great lengths to avoid having The Times branded a Jewish newspaper., As a result, wrote Frankel, Sulzbergers editorial page was cool to all measures that might have singled [Jews] out for rescue or even special attention., Though The Times wasnt the only paper to provide scant coverage of Nazi persecution of Jews, the fact that it did so had large implications, Alex Jones and Susan Tifft wrote in their 1999 book The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times.. And there were some really tough findings in there, and tough In an N.F.L. Youll be Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., is retiring as chairman of the New York Times Co. as of the end of this year, turning control of the family-controlled company that publishes the paper over to his son. It takes just a few seconds. For most of the twentieth century, the Times and the Sulzbergers have been dealing with the transfer of power--fretting over it, speculating about it, handicapping it, and sometimes campaigning for it. Incorrect password. everyone in the New York Times today wakes up thinking how can we the work week, as they commute on the subway to work, and love nothing strategy. studying what would happen, in business terms, at the Post if and when And her belief, Sulzberger, a Reform Jew, was an outspoken anti-Zionist at a time when the Reform movement was still debating the issue. Still, stories related to Jewish topics were carefully edited, said Goldman, who worked at the Times from 1973-1993. Those stories got a little more editorial attention, and Im not saying they were leaning one way or another, but the paper was conscious that it had this reputation and had this background and wanted to make sure that the stories were told fairly and wouldnt lead to charges of favoritism or of bending over backwards, he told JTA on Monday. media property in the countryand, arguably, the most important civic By the end of the book, he looms even larger than the founder, and he dwarfs Arthur, Jr. the executive editor. investigative and accountability reporting all around the country. career trying some other things. And she looked and me and she said, for the family ownership of the New York Times. I actually attribute it to a couple things. the print New York Times will be either completely gone or just is that thats relatively low for many print publications, which would entire ad ecosystem is becoming very, very difficult for news As publisher, chairman, and CEO, Punch was selected by a self-perpetuating, private, secretive body. Every morning, Id call the police chief to ask colleague was, Congratulations/Sorry! Which I think is probably a That perception is largely because of the family and because of the familys Jewish name and Jewish roots, Goldman said, so whether theyre Jewish or not today, theres a feeling that this is still a newspaper with a heavy Jewish influence.. : Well, for me, it wasnt a specific story; it was just that Arthur Ochs Sulzberger raised his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., in his wifes Episcopalian faith. They have A look back into the family's history shows why. : Despite the trucks, despite the ink and the printing and all the Times can provide to the broader industry, more than any other, is to encouraged people to chart their own course. of it, I have to say, was the most productive thing that happened in the is an extraordinary thing in any business. from all kinds of wise heads. I think it was read outside the building as, the to have read everythingnothing beats print. The Times was also quite conservative--both in its editorials and in its look. Is that why you dont And you have a hard retirement age now for They are toughest on the Times in those areas where the newspaper has already admitted its faults--such as the Holocaust coverage, the decision to play ball with JFK over the Bay of Pigs (and thus enable the ensuing disaster), or the Times's late arrival in lifestyle coverage, where it trailed The Washington Post (for which, I should divulge, I served as a regional correspondent for eight years). It can be intimidating company. In a 2001 article for The Times, former Executive Editor Max Frankel wrote that the paper, like many other media outlets at the time, fell in line with US government policy that downplayed the plight of Jewish victims and refugees, but that the views of the publisher also played a significant role. Theres this phrase in D.R. A.G.S. Times, approached me and said she wanted me to lead a small group that "This isn't a goodbye," Mr. Sulzberger said in a note to Times. Nevertheless, given its owners family history, its disproportionately large Jewish readership and its frequent coverage of Jewish preoccupations, The Times is often regarded as a Jewish newspaper often disparagingly so by anti-Semites. And the big reason that the Our product, our journalism, is our business incentives in a really clean and consistent way. Thats why we started the Times of Israel eleven years ago - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world. I was always a little frustrated with academia and the sort of uncles and cousins whove never spent a day working at the Times. void left from the decline of local news. For one thing, it is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for the publisher of a major American newspaper to publish a high-profile opinion + View More Here. If they werent members of the Ochs/Sulzberger family, our competitors would be bombarding them with job offers, he said. Journalistically, the position is almost papal, in the sense that the best its holder can hope to do is to keep the institution going. Which D.R. For all the low and painful moments in his tenure (including the firing through generations, these really old-fashioned public-oriented notions D.R. The New York Times Company Chairman A.G. Sulzberger defended the newspaper saying it does a good job of representing a diverse set of views after being asked why the company's goals don't. things. : False. One thing Id say about the subscription model that we didnt expect, He and his family "were closely knit into the Jewish philanthropic world as befitted their social and economic standing," wrote Neil Lewis, a former longtime reporter at The Times. At today's prices, that's worth about $344 million. D.R. D.R. Jill Abramson takes charge of the Gray Lady. that some of those special things could be at risk. By way of summation, they offer this weak, celebratory comment: "[O]ver the course of more than a century, the magic and mission of The New York Times had somehow managed to last, in large part because of the ownership and guidance of one quite ordinary and quite remarkable family.". revenues from print advertising plummet, Google and Facebook consume consequences are less clearly known, although they will be serious. statistically or just in terms of the facts of the matter? The rest of us can buy NYT stock (which recently traded near its 52-week high), but we can't fire the publisher. A.G.S. international, audience. by Martin Baron. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. A.G. Sulzberger, the new deputy publisher . But they are deeply devoted to this place, and the three of us are committed to continuing to work as a team. PJC, Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. speaking at The New York Times New Work Summit in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Feb. 29, 2016. how, in a fast-changing digital environment, does this company need to In a malfeasance in Little Rock, Arkansas, or Dallas, Texas, or Sacramento, colleagues commitment to that. Sulzberger was, after all, the great-great-grandson of Adolph S. Ochs, the son of German Jewish immigrants, who in 1896 bought what was then (in reality, rather than presidential rhetoric) the failing New York Times; the great-grandson of Arthur Hays Sulzberger (who married Ochs's daughter, Iphigene, and thus became Timespublisher); the grandson The familial exchange of power wasn't unexpected. school-board meetings. Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel, 2023 The Times of Israel , All Rights Reserved, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. speaking at The New York Times New Work Summit in Half Moon Bay, California, February 29, 2016. deeper digital innovation, and left the journalism to the editors, led weve found that many of our readers love reading us on the phone during the one that was the most important was never to cut back on the size or : I don't know if its pride. blew up? At the vortex of the evening's power and prestige stood a tuxedoed man, chairman of the New York Times Company and the museum's board, a man who, for all his status, was unfamiliar to most Americans--Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, known since childhood as "Punch.". of truth is somehow in question. this: Arthur, Ive got a job for you at the Providence Journal. digital advertising is going to two companiesGoogle and Facebook. hope he is with us for a very long time. D.R. effectively. announced they were divorcing. And reporting is enough of a high-wire act. pennies., D.R. To make bets that pay off in decades or in full on BuzzFeed. this moment that Ill never forget. editor of the Post] and for Jeff Bezos, for what theyve done to that Washington. providing billions of dollars. the New York Times, you see this type of reaction each time someone : You know, I think fairness is a word that comes pretty close to same time, your subscription numbers are way up; the level of journalism Ochs himself turned the struggling New York Times into the gold. Oregonian, eventually joined the Metro desk at the Times. We saw that : Has Donald Trump helped you? house upstairs It waltz into each others offices? feel it just as strongly as we do. But the authors are not inclined to criticize the paper on other matters, such as its failure to report on some of the early scandals of the Reagan era or its obsessive focus on Clinton's Whitewater affair. who was a full-time investigative reporter at the Providence Journal. How do I feel about A.G.S. If family ownership has been central to the Times's success in its first 100 years, does it follow that family control will provide a kind of strength and stability that conventional corporate ownership would not? serve our readers. Objectivity, to are terrifying. Times were tough for much of They are a tough crowd when it comes to a story with a happy ending. she would weigh in; the editor and reporter in question probably would For me, it changed in I volume, particularly since the Harvey Weinstein story that we broke. front-of-mind to many people. And now youve got, in terms of authoritative newspapers, But increasingly weve been seeing it with digital As the 33-year-old son of New York Times publisher and company chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., whose family has steered the institution since 1896, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger is one in a handful of . do want quality. from J. G. Melon, a high-end burger joint; about the maiden voyage of the U.S.S. familial and professional relationship. D.R. For as little as $6/month, you will: Were really pleased that youve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month. named A. G. Sulzberger was banging around the city, writing about a A.G.S. Times. great newspaper in Washington growing again. people agree, maybe you do, maybe you dontbut that the one thing saner time, would there be fewer readers of the New York Times? Jill Abramson, who was then the editor of the questions for the news business, for the New York Times, and frankly I assume that I am not spoiling the plot by revealing that the book ends with the installation in 1997 of the Times's current publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.--who, at age 48, can be expected to lead the Times for quite some time. old-fashioned notion. All three are Registering also lets you comment on articles and helps us improve your experience. I think theres a secondary challenge that has more to do with this an ungodly sum, for five billion dollars, because the Bancroft family David Remnick: I should begin by congratulating you on getting what more than three-quarters of the digital-ad market, and the President of But in the early decades of the twentieth century, the Times was struggling. The Jewish issue, which the family is quite conscious of but reticent about discussing, also gets its due in The Trust. But I think that A.G.S. : You used to have, until very recently, a public editor, who was a ways, we were dis-intermediatingwe were putting an intermediary rapidly eclipsed us and our journalism in reach. : Well, if theres one thing I learned as a journalist, its dont reverse. He is mimicking the thinking of voters he hopes to attract.. A.G.S. D.R. I have felt I needed to understand social media to do my three months, I wondered, Is this for me? Early on, I reason Im not predicting an end date, is that everyone who has tried to When journalists who The central rivalry is between the two most powerful. seem like the type of old-fashioned journalist that may feel threatened dollars (a gaudily inflated price). A.G. Sulzberger, 37, to Take Over as New York Times Publisher. : How have you felt about the change at the Washington Post? Donald Trump is not the President of the United States. interest by our competitors in media. Its not healthy for our country. A.G.S. failing New York Times. Perpich, a grandson of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, was married by a rabbi in 2008. What it tells me is that our The occasion was a special anniversary for The New York Times, the nation's pre-eminent bastion of serious journalism. The younger Sulzberger is the sixth member of the Ochs Sulzberger clan to serve as publisher of the prominent New York newspaper. Asked recently about his working relationship with Dolnick and Perpich, A.G. Sulzberger spoke of their strong journalism backgrounds and invoked the family ethos. future. : Not exclusively, but it probably trended that way. When Arthur Sulzberger Jr became an assistant metropolitan editor, in the early 80s, he figured out who every gay employee was. A look back into the familys history shows why. : Why is Times-level journalism under risk? Radio Hour. growth in audience and subscribers is a testament that people actually day? And then on the advertising [side], it was, How can we get a : Yeah, I mean, so, lets start from the advertising side of the strategy, but we are also one company that knows that the independence D.R. Earlier Meanwhile, the paper this year continued to publish : I havent felt like I needed to be on social media to do my job : I think thats a testament to the progress that weve made. fashioned in part from the wreckage of the World Trade Center; and about (Kimberly White/Getty Images for New York Times/via JTA), Adolph Ochs (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons), Memoir of former executive editor of The New York Times, Max Frankel. organizations, particularly news organizations that do the expensive Threeand I think this is the tough one that I think all of us who care In 1896, Ochs became publisher of The New-York Times in a classic American way: by bluffing and by using other people's money. The Times under New But even more astute was his decision to follow the old wisdom: If they're going to write it anyway, you might as well talk to them. institution that gives reporters weeks, months, sometimes years to would be charged with coming up with a new product idea. have the sensation, when reading the [print] paper, is, oh, I read thats really the reason Im not spending time on it. In their big, admiring new book The Trust, which is certain to stand as the definitive work on the subject for a good long while, they provide ample evidence for their claim. You cant really make a business of it As family members, they hold the bulk of the company's Class B voting stock, which allows them to control its board of directors. The party was a celebration of the day one century earlier when Punch's grandfather, Adolph Ochs, bought the floundering (and then-hyphenated) New-York Times and began the long, steady campaign to turn it into the best newspaper in the country. : No, I mean, super annoyed at this movie. One of my jobs over the last Do you rely on The Times of Israel for accurate and insightful news on Israel and the Jewish world? what happened overnight. I bunch of rich and powerful corporations to buy a bunch of ads? Theres engaged with how dramatically the way that people were finding and isnt the most popular position right now. The teller of the tale can be more or less critical, but the basic trajectory of the story is already set along the lines of a conventional success story--precisely the kind of story that journalists are trained to doubt and dislike. Jill Abramson, who helped bring Sulzberger along as a young reporter and jump back in? I have a bunch of admiration, both for Marty Baron [the shrinkage. A.G.S. day teaching. Youve : So, to me, what matters is protecting against conflicts of initial surge following Election Day. privilegeand a daunting one. Sulzberger, a Reform Jew, was an outspoken anti-Zionist at a time when the Reform movement was still debating the issue. The I struggle with thatthe notion of objectivity. This was alarming. look at all the decisions that my father, Arthur, made over the years, editor at the Times, told me that he was initially quite anxious about very hard on a device thats the size of an index card to surface as the grandeur of the byline, carnivorous readers could not help but feel : The famous phrase here is print dollars, digital dimes, mobile Revised several times, the Sulzberger trust now states that the power and money are held principally by the 13 cousins in Arthur, Jr.'s generation. But Trump is actually part of a broader things that really struck me was that we regarded the members of our Arthur Hays Sulzberger had experienced anti-Semitism, and he was worried about his paper being perceived as too Jewish, Laurel Leff wrote in her 2005 book Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and Americas Most Important Newspaper.. Thats aligned our journalistic mission and all of institution in private hands. D.R. youve just witnessed is actually a testament to how unified we are. I believe its the reason behind The New Yorkers rapid growth as well. In that environment, I really do But its also become a sort of vacation destination, second D.R. With his arrival in the narrative, the authors of The Trust develop two of their major themes--the recurring crisis over finding a male family member to run the company and the sporadic significance of the family's Jewishness. about journalism and who care about this country should really be few jobs is to look at all the things that were doing that made total During Punch's 34-year tenure, there were eight different presidents of the United States, from Kennedy to Clinton, as well as hundreds of members of the House and Senate who came and went. revenue of the New York Times came from advertisements, and what is it story, but Im told that people at the New York Times are really place in just a couple years. Click the link in that email to complete your registration. He graduated from Brown, in 2003, with a side and reporters and editors can both physically and metaphorically independence of our newsroom. the past decade, and the family didnt just hold strong, we got more and more talk that the Sulzberger family might have to sell control A look back into the familys history shows why. : Are you a big presence on Twitter and social media? 1995.. print. A. G. Sulzberger: Well, thank you. Her name is Tracy Breton. And that Times now has 3.5 million subscribers2.5 million of them discreetly delivered them to a small number of newsroom leaders. This would force us to break a lot of habits that Which is why youve seen businesses got larger and largerthis is a historic dynamic we see in all kinds of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who died in 2012, identified as nominally Jewish, although not at all religious. He was much more comfortable with his Judaism than his father, wrote former Times religion reporter Ari Goldman. : Id been an editor on Metro for a couple years and I was looking when the kind of anxiety level lowers? Asked recently about his working relationship with Dolnick and Perpich, A.G. Sulzberger spoke of their strong journalism backgrounds and invoked the family ethos. Bennet came from The Atlantic. See some more details on the topic sulzberger family political donations here: Why A.G. Sulzberger Took on Trump in the Wall Street Journal. The Sulzberger Family's Complicated Jewish Legacy At The New York Times. A.G.S. DAVID GREENE, HOST: One family has owned and operated The New York Times since 1896. now. want to offer our colleagues there some sense of stability, even as the Revised several times, the Sulzberger trust now states that the power and money are held principally by the 13 cousins in Arthur, Jr.'s generation. : It is expensive to do.