The Trust
Tifft, Susan E. & Jones, Alex S.
This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text. BOOKS IN REVIEW Their Times The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York...
...In 1961, Dryfoos was named Times publisher, replacing Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who remained as board chairman...
...This is a fine sentiment, and you do wish him well, but you hope he consults with Punch and Abe...
...Rosenthal as execu(That ~ ~7,~.~-~,,, same day, .J.,¢" --" ~" in a spooky .a%"s" "'~" portent, the "~ landmark seven-foot clock on the front of the Times building went dark when the bulbs blew out...
...had been infatuated with the Times since childhood, and while he too could claim title as publisher through bloodline, to his credit he also seemed to want to earn it...
...When he was done he stashed them away in the promotion department...
...He slopped around in the pressroom of the Boston Globe on his first winter break at Tufts...
...On graduating he worked part of the summer at the Daily Telegraph in London, and the other part at Scotty Reston's weekly on Martha's Vineyard...
...In 1941, Marian married Orvil Dryfoos, also the scion of a well-to-do, although not quite as distinguished, Jewish family...
...joined sailors...
...When The Trust says that "Arthur Jr...
...By then he and Iphigene had four children: Marian, Ruth, Judith, and Arthur Jr., who early on was nicknamed "Punch...
...More important, Punch honored Adolph Ochs's old promise to "give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interest involved...
...He joined the school paper in prep school...
...Actually it is no longer as powerful as it once was, either, but save that thought for later...
...The document was the first of many," Tifft and Jones note, "to ensure that the New York Times would never stray from family hands...
...He wanted to be publisher of the New YorkTimes," a cousin says, "as long as I can remember...
...Ochses and Sulzbergers, along with Adlers, Dryfooses, and Goldens, appear only as background figures...
...Tell me, he would ask, you can put a story on page one, right...
...A recent front-page story found a societal gain in the supremely stupid and utterly pointless war between Ethiopia and Eritrea...
...The Rockefellers are down to a lone senator, while the Kennedys lurch from disaster to disaster, and even if W. should become president it would still be too early to think of a Bush dynasty...
...posedly undignified parts...
...Onward after K~--'~ that to the Times Washington bureau, where ~ ~ Arthur covered ~ vice-presidential • ,,~.'~,~_ ~ candidate S o Punch reigned, and ,~ the Times prospered...
...took a hands-off approach to both news and opinion" it is being disingenuous...
...When he graduated from Tufts he worked at the Raleigh (N.C...
...chose Howell Raines, then the Times's Washington bureau chief...
...Punch had grown up with the New York Times as a fifth child...
...Abe would say yes, he could, and then Punch would ask the same question about the managing editor, and perhaps the deputy managing editor and even the assistant managing editor...
...most prepared since Adolph Ochs himself...
...Women, gays, and minorities had to be protected from the Reagan-Bush-Pat Robertson terror...
...The Sunday department was a world unto itself...
...He said he would publish "the news impartially, without fear or favor," and more or less he did...
...He was, in fact, very clear about where the Times was going, and when he eventually succeeded Punch he used his new office to speed it along...
...When they were finished he would grab Abe...
...In 19 17, Ochs's only child, Iphigene, married Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the scion of a distinguished Jewish family that traced its arrival in the New World to the early 17oo's...
...His views were always clear...
...In a policy pronouncement then, he announced that "diversity" was the "single most important issue" facing the Times...
...To an extent the Times had always done that, although usually the views were presented on the editorial page, and even then only at election time...
...If Punch was the least prepared candidate ever to become Times publisher, then Arthur Jr., a child of his first marriage, was surely the / #,it • m. N George Bush in 1980 , and spent election day in Houston, watching the returns with a magazine reporter...
...Times people in same-sex relationships, he promised, would get health insurance and other benefits similar to those of other employees...
...Marian, according to Tifft and Jones, thought the tangled involvement "great fun...
...Most books about the Times (including My Times, the one by this reviewer) have been about its editors and reporters...
...For example, on becoming publisher, he sent a videotaped message to the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association...
...November 1999 • The American Spectator "What these men failed to take into account, however, was droit du seigneur--the divine right of kings," Tifft and Jones write...
...When he learned they were to marry, Arthur Hays Sulzberger had burst into laughter...
...But the truth, of course, was the truth as he and other kindred spirits defined it...
...They competed for space in the newshole and insisted on their own priorities...
...From the moment he became publisher," Tifft and Jones write, "he was like a silversmith, noisily banging the Times into a shape that reflected his own values, beliefs and personality...
...Putnam's Sons...
...When Bill Clinton, in his first major act as president, proposed an end to the military's ban on homosexuals, the editorial page applauded...
...But blood did tell in the end, and no matter what his father's misgivings, Punch's mother, Iphigene, was insistent, and so was his wife, Carol...
...Abe would then cite church and state, the need to separate the editorial and business sides, and probably throw in something about the First Amendment...
...His place had been automatic, assured by the simple fact of his name and his blood tie to the New York Times...
...Yes, Abe would say each time, they can put stories on the front page, as well...
...He also dirtied his hands on the nighttime shift in production...
...The authors have done an astonishing job of research, and while their gracefully written book is hardly censorious, in its 870 pages it is, goodness knows, comprehensive...
...Under Arthur Jr., however, the editorial page and once sacrosanct news pages would reinforce one another...
...When Punch was publisher and Rosenthal was executive editor they sometimes played a game...
...Arthur Hays Sulzberger once commissioned the revered, Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Mike Berger to write a history of the Times...
...Supposedly objective journalists look foolish when they camp out there...
...Because Punch was the first publisher since Adolph Ochs to come to his post as a blood relative rather than as a son-in-law, he would never suffer his father's self-doubt about being 'the man who married the boss's daughter,' nor would he consider himself a 'coach,' rather than a leader, as Orvil had...
...The Trust concludes by saying that Arthur Jr.'s "task is to preserve the Times, and all it represents, and pass it on to yet another generation—it is the job, one might say, he was born for...
...Heiskell's second wife, the actress Madeleine Carroll, had been one of his many mistresses...
...The American Spectator . November r999 75 This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text...
...Homophobia and sexism raged in the armed forces...
...Consequently Times editorials grew both shrill and simplistic...
...Perhaps one of Adolph Ochs's other grandchildren would be more suitable...
...It was published as The Story of The New York Times 1851-1951, but only after Sulzberger excised the supJOHN CORRY is TAS's senior correspondent and author of My Times: Adventures in the News Trade (G.P...
...The once private family is no longer very private...
...It really did not matter...
...Meanwhile Amory Bradford, the Times's imperious general manager, sought to seize the moment and move Punch aside in a palace coup...
...Consider the history first...
...BOOKS IN REVIEW Their Times The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones Little, Brown / 870 pages / $29.95 REVIEWED BY John Corry T he Ochses and Sulzbergers are "arguably the most powerful blood-related dynasty in twentieth-century America," Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones write in The Trust, and, arguably, they may be right...
...Whatever his political views, he did not inflict them on the newsroom...
...was destiny's tot...
...Punch later arranged a reporting assignment for Arthur Jr...
...Apparently he saw him as "a kindred spirit: a contrarian whose values had taken shape during the sixties, who viewed the world as a moral battleground...
...Indeed shortly after his ascension, the Gallagher Report, a newsletter for media executives, said that Punch had to "learn in 15 months what he was intended to learn in 15 years...
...The Ochses and Sulzbergers, however, began their ascendancy before the turn of the century, and have kept themselves intact ever since...
...In 1935, Arthur succeeded the now severely depressed Ochs as publisher of the Times...
...There are days now when the Times just seems silly...
...At 37, Punch was the youngest chief executive in Times history, and, it seemed, its least prepared...
...They remain, as the subtitle of The Trust describes them, even if once again arguably, "The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times...
...At the same time the news columns assiduously monitored (and wildly over-estimated) its influence on national politics...
...Fundamentalist nuts were trying to take over school systems, and only the callous wanted to end welfare as we know it...
...The day before the wedding—the first in their generation—the four Sulzberger children signed a "buyback" agreement promising to give one another the right of first refusal on the Times common stock they one day would inherit...
...It was all bantering, of course, and even if Punch really did want something on the front page, which he sometimes did, he knew it was against the rules to suggest it...
...The Trust no doubt would have distressed him...
...The editorial page insisted the Christian Right was a threat to all good things...
...So, Punch would eventually ask, why can't the publisher do that, too...
...He transformed the Times into what was universally recognized as America's finest newspaper...
...In the fall of 1981, Arthur Jr...
...Actually the Joneses —the authors are husband and wife—dance around something here they can never quite bring themselves to acknowledge: that the paper that once prided itself on reporting the news without regard to party, sect, or interest would now reflect the views of its owner...
...The Times, especially on the news side, was a collection of dukedoms and satrapies...
...The Times could, and often did, come up with first-rate stories, but warmed-over sixties thinking remains hard to shake...
...Even his father suspected that Punch, who was merely the Times's assistant treasurer, was not up to the job...
...Actually it is no longer as powerful as it once was, either...
...For a while he attended Harvard Business School, but found his class too male and too white, and did not stay very long...
...Brutal cops terrorized the inner cities...
...Clifton Daniel, Harry Truman's son-in-law, and for a while the Times's managing editor, later described him, nastily, although not necessarily inaccurately, as "the pet dog in the family...
...As the reporter later recalled, "We sort of clung together in desperation as the Republicans won a major landslide...
...at the AP bureau in London, and a similar position for Gail at the UPI bureau...
...By "hands-off" it means Arthur Jr...
...Similar stories went on to the Times metropolitan desk in New 44 become a staple for page one...
...said When Abe Rosenthal ran the newsroom he had worked hard to maintain the wall separating news and opinion...
...Arthur Jr...
...By bloodline, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger—Punch — was the obvious choice to succeed Dryfoos, although it seemed at first that blood might not tell...
...But with Punch as publisher and the great A.M...
...Meanwhile, union strangleholds were broken while the company diversified, and the Times won nearly half of its then 63 Pulitzer Prizes...
...At the same time their family history, though inseparable from that of the Times, has been presented only in a laundered version...
...Adolph Ochs, the son of an itinerant peddler, came up from Tennessee in 1896, and took over the moribund and then hyphenated New-York Times...
...In fact, droit du seigneur refers to the feudal lord's right to deflower a bride, not the divine right ofkings--a particularly infelicitous mistranslation in Punch's case...
...But years before he became publisher, Punch had had a brief affair with a reporter in the women's department, and then been involved in an embarrassing paternity suit...
...In 1988, he was promoted to deputy publisher...
...Meanwhile he had married Gail Gregg, an attractive young journalism graduate from Kansas...
...But two years later the amiable, gentle Dryfoos died, his chronic heart ailment worsened by the strain of a tumultuous 114-day printers' strike...
...November 1999 • The American Spectator...
...Feelings were hurt, grown men wept, and blood was spilled in internecine warfare...
...The news pages then ran stories celebrating gay soldiers and S ynchronism settled in at the Times...
...They were sure they could manipulate the callow new publisher to their own purposes...
...But Arthur Jr...
...grandly that the mission of the Times was "truth," and that this was "probably one of the greatest missions of any organization in the world...
...Nighttime news editors disputed daytime assignment editors...
...The women Eritrea was using as combat soldiers, the Times reported, were taking "Eritrea further down the road to sexual equality...
...did not specifically tell anyone what to write, but under his suzerainty there was really no need to...
...Punch would drop in on the page-one news conference, and then sit silently while the editors deliberated...
...America had been dominated by conservative white males far too long...
...Marian, his widow, then became the third wife of Andrew Heiskell, the chairman of the board of Time Inc...
...On June 21, 1963, the Times carried a pageone story: "Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Named Times Publisher...
...The editorial-page position was clear, and by osmosis it spread to the newsroom...
...As editor of the editorial page, Arthur Jr...
...In 1 985, Punch appointed Arthur assistant publisher...
...Bloodline aside, this still seemed an appropriate move...
...the family has always wanted it that way...
...There is no record, or even a rumor, of his ever having dallied again...
...The once private family is no longer very private...
...But it is hard to think of anyone whose values took shape in the dogmatic sixties as a contrarian, and moral battlegrounds are best fought over by theologians...
...It grew from a $1oo million ~\N business in 1963 to a $1.7 billion business when he left as publisher 29 years later...
...Times, first in news, and later in advertising and production...
...The Washington bureau thought the New York editors were boors, and the New York editors thought the bureau was staffed by provincials...
...Nonetheless executives on the business side of the Times were not displeased...
...When Abe Rosenthal ran the newsroom he had worked hard to maintain the wall separating news and opinion, but under the new management the wall has completely crumbled...
...Progress, though, did not come easily...
...Macho was out, and sensitivity was in...
...tive editor, rough order was induced...
...Indeed Arthur Jr...
...Punch gave up his position as publisher to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., his son, on January 16, x992...
...A year later he went over to the business side...
...True, his father often had his way with Times women...
...Iphigene Sulzberger, as always, maintained a dignified silence...
...Meanwhile everyone stood guard over the rights of women, and did what they could to support them...
Vol. 32 • November 1999 • No. 11
