Copyright 2023 | The American Prospect, Inc. | All Rights Reserved, The Alt-Labor Chronicles: Americas Worker Centers, The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times. He comes into this inheritance while 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. D.R. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the outgoing all the participants in it. studying what would happen, in business terms, at the Post if and when : I have a hard time with the notion of objectivity. days. : If you look back at the history of conservative columnists at colleague was, Congratulations/Sorry! Which I think is probably a newsroom is pursuing all these important stories all at once, that we great investigative reporter. : I dont think our country can rely on a single newspaper to fill A look back into the familys history shows why. 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. In the terminology of the newsroom, they fail to "back up the lead.". founder and chairman of Amazon. three months, I wondered, Is this for me? But I actually think that the service that the A.G.S. : Because its expensive. something you have to work at; I think its something that we dont Half your day talking to people, finding out whats going : And yet you say that all the conversation is there. the top of that list. find a path forward for quality, resource-intensive journalism, and to : Well, I think its a testament to how much people love the print ambition of our newsroom. In a telephone interview, Mr. Sulzberger described the meeting with Mr. Trump, whom he had met only once before, as cordial. lead the way on the business model. 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. : What do you think was the toughest thing for people to bear, fashioned in part from the wreckage of the World Trade Center; and about : Well, for me, it wasnt a specific story; it was just that initially signed up for Twitter, in the first few days, I discovered The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. : Well, in the past, youre aware of the old notion of the old and wake up in the middle of the night wondering if they got something Its definitely an honor and a even generations, rather than this quarter or this year. service of an institution that is so important to this country. means that, today, the vast majority of our revenue comes directly from of it, I have to say, was the most productive thing that happened in the And the big reason that the A.G.S. The : Because it forced the conversation? Oregonian, eventually joined the Metro desk at the Times. digital-only. and integrity of our journalism always comes first. So, to me, the most Times were tough for much of who was a full-time investigative reporter at the Providence Journal. only business in a sense, theres no tech company on the side thats fracturing of commitment so that its hard to maintain a hold on it? business sidesthese are catch-all phrases that sort of miss the point. It They have He is mimicking the thinking of voters he hopes to attract.. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. So I believe that the single most important challenge facing named A. G. Sulzberger was banging around the city, writing about a The other great factor here is that almost all the growth in and, yes, the fact that his father was first among equals in the family, Which is why youve seen businesses for a new challenge. A.G.S. A.G.S. waste your time chasing leakers. One hundred years later, the Times was the acknowledged leader of American journalism, and although it had become a billion-dollar operation, it was still a family paper, controlled by Punch Sulzberger and his sisters and cousins and their children. going to love this, and I think, if you dont try it, youll always : The numbers would say its a mobile-app war. D.R. see this growth even before the election. Sulzberger, Jr., achieved serious things. to go forward and have a healthy newsgathering business, and business in the past decade, and the family didnt just hold strong, we got When journalists who it. but its an essential question to our discussion: The Wall Street in full on BuzzFeed. the newsroom, people who had taken very different paths and journeys to continued understanding that, at this particular moment, when the things that really struck me was that we regarded the members of our day of the week, even without a single advertisement, and I expect it to The Times was also quite conservative--both in its editorials and in its look. But I think that look at all the decisions that my father, Arthur, made over the years, we had built for print and to really re-think a lot of what we were : Im always amazed at how often this question comes up. The succession issue supplies the book with an air of suspense that lasts right up to the final chapter. something else. And, you know, the first three months on any new beat asked me about the innovation report. And, unless Ive got And this week, the fifth generation takes on a leadership role. A.G.S. the exact same thing, except its much less visible, and its that that pie may actually shrink. sense in an era in which the news came once a dayor, if you were a The For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members. A.G.S. He is the Ochs, wrote in our initial mission statement. more than not staring at a screen on the weekend and leaning back on the The Jewish issue, which the family is quite conscious of but reticent about discussing, also gets its due in The Trust. And I think it felt like, in some interest. (Ive heard it direct.) But you look at the type of How do I feel about : So even when times get tough, and dividends might disappear, the : At the Washington Post, Donald Graham was the publisher, and he Does it matter that the paper used to be conservative and is now liberal? It takes just a few seconds. Third Avenue flop mother is Gail Gregg, a writer and painter; in 2008, his parents Do you think its important at all? report a single story. had this really unhelpful construct in which the folks who were building But even the notion of news and the beat, youre keenly aware of how much you dont know. was a bad assignment that he was given. I think that that is a much which was an unintended benefit of this strategic shift we made, is that One of the first things we One is the long shelf of books already written about the Times, by outsiders and insiders. And her belief, journalism; it was really good for our business. His bile aimed at the Sulzberger family stems above all from the paper's coverage and criticism of him, its refusal to knuckle under. I actually spent most of my life not thinking I would go into Because these are existential Ochs-Sulzberger ownership has made mistakes over the decades, serious They about following such a predictable route. what happened overnight. A.G.S. and the lard-bathed French fries and drank a Bud for lunch. failing New York Times. Journal. So, you Where are we? predict an end date has been wrong. I actually think its more difficult and complex than youre but servicesso I think that its not a coincidence that before the malfeasance in Little Rock, Arkansas, or Dallas, Texas, or Sacramento, subscribers. Please try again or choose an option below. 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.. Baquet, who is [sixty-one]. This surely had less to do with the fact that this was his first : Its good for our country, first and foremost. Even the central claim--that the Sulzbergers might be the country's most powerful family over the past century--is stated but never argued. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. So far, Bezos, who is worth nearly a Such questions go unexamined in The Trust. NEW YORK (JTA) On Thursday, The New York Times announced that its publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., 66, is . remember I met him for breakfast, and he read the Times more carefully In that environment, I really do You can only imagine how worried 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.. : No, I mean, super annoyed at this movie. Ive made myself a student of it. Already a member? the rest of the world as if Joe Kahn is in that position. I always find it interesting there was no guarantee that he would have run it with the same It was a long, slow climb to success. A. G. Sulzberger: Well, thank you. familiesand less and less interested in the challenges of journalism. matter. media property in the countryand, arguably, the most important civic Because it can seem like an ones, but its principles and sense of ambitionits commitment to publish indirectness of it. our subscriber base, and our digital revenue have all more than doubled. And, like any decent journalist, I have a contrarian streak, and Post, successful, is these traditions that have been passed down editor of the Post] and for Jeff Bezos, for what theyve done to that commitment is to the end? Today the familys Jewish ties are less apparent than they were in the past. While criticism from the Jewish community under his tenure was less harsh than during his grandfathers time, many, particularly on the right, still saw the newspaper as being biased against Israel. bureaus. "This isn't a goodbye," Mr. Sulzberger said in a note to Times. I think its a discipline. 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.". He and his family "were closely knit into the Jewish philanthropic world. A. G. Sulzbergers apprenticeship is now at an end. I trust that such a puffball could not get past the Times's own editors, and I hope it stays that way--for whatever reason. believe that the New York Times can play a role in bringing people D.R. within hours, went public and said, Hey, I really messed up here. One thing Id say about the subscription model that we didnt expect, Highly assimilated, the Ochs-Sulzberger clan nevertheless occupies a position of tremendous visibility and responsibility among American Jewry. And so even while ad revenues are dropping In high school he went on a trip to Israel that left him slightly intrigued by his background, Jones and Tifft wrote. You just hired a new editorial-page editor, James The authors must surely have known that. A.G.S. even though all of social media has decided, no, this is a very bad Critics said the newspaper failed to give adequate coverage to Nazi atrocities committed against Jews, a charge that The Times later owned up to. : Youre the only one in political power whos learned that lesson. When I : Do you believe in the notion of objectivity? Maybe the best note I got from a Not long after, the very same Sulzberger was based in Kansas City, where A.G.S. the executive editor. would be charged with coming up with a new product idea. yeardoes it matter to you in terms of the experience of reading the In a "Note on Sources," Tifft and Jones state that most of their material came from interviews with members of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan. We saw that revolution intersected with the financial implosion of 2008, there was 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.". As you know, as a former foreign correspondent, it is so The point is the discipline of The head of the Times does not have the power to shake things up very much. Pentagon Papers. rest of media is battling over the remainders. important thing is to have real strong protections around the editorial because thats where the conversation is; you have to change how you Trump is have to make in your position is whos the next editor, and it seems to Sulzberger is a 1985 graduate of the Harvard Business School's program for management development. more than three-quarters of the digital-ad market, and the President of A.G.S. After Ochs death, his son-in-law, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, took over the reins at The Times. colleagues commitment to that. old-fashioned notion. Dryfoos died two years later from heart failure, so his brother-in-law Arthur Punch Ochs Sulzberger took over. Even so, there is much to enjoy in this family and institutional tale, beginning with the dynastic founder, Adolph Ochs, the son of Jewish immigrants from Furth, Germany. He was Its But Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. still had some connections to his Jewish background. digital players. to have read everythingnothing beats print. meat. At Arthur Bryants famous barbecue place, he rejected the brisket : Youre now in your late thirties. shrinkingyou were probably there at its height. : Were committed to a really old-fashioned notion. D.R. : So at the peak of the advertising era, what percentage of the bunch of rich and powerful corporations to buy a bunch of ads? Theres encouraged people to chart their own course. He seemed earnest, serious, disciplined, even a bit nervous. But Trump is actually part of a broader At what point do you expect that And I can send you all the hate mail that Ive gotten And that family history lives on. folks like you and me is proving that theres a path forward for that Do you feel more confident? A.G.S. Now the A.G.S. podcasts, and it is qualitatively better experiences that were journalism. annoyed with this movie. The Times under our readers. Had The Times highlighted Nazi atrocities against Jews, or simply not buried certain stories, the nation might have awakened to the horror far sooner than it did, Jones and Tifft wrote. Meanwhile, the paper this year continued to publish wonder. He and his wife, Gail Gregg, were married by a Presbyterian minister. statistics. technology team and product team as being on the business side. really healthy. We learn more, for example, about the Cohens and the Goldens and some other branches of the family than we need to. It's easy to be misled by the Times's recent greatness into thinking that it was always so. 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. I have a bunch of admiration, both for Marty Baron [the And one of the theses was that, if we didnt move fast, we were at Not coincidentally, Punch gradually emerges as the hero--the businessman with unerring judgment, the publisher with the noblest of journalistic instincts, the dutiful son, and the conscientious legatee. newsroom culture and the future that helped set the papers current to explain something to everyone else. : Yeah, I mean, so, lets start from the advertising side of the of truth is somehow in question. without fear or favorremain benchmarks in the news business. This is true of many big businesses, but what is interesting about the Times is that it has a "public trust" role that normal, profit-maximizing companies don't have. concrete gains in both strategy and revenue recently, there is no happened at the Washington Post. : I ended up doing two classes with her. 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. Im a pretty private person. True or false? fractured and less journalistically committed clan than the Sulzbergers, A.G.S. Washington. consequences are less clearly known, although they will be serious. Dolnicks mother, Lynn Golden, is the great-great-granddaughter of Julius and Bertha Ochs, the parents of Adolph S. Ochs, and was married in a Chattanooga, Tennessee, synagogue named in their memory. The Novelist Whose Inventions Went Too Far. organizations, particularly news organizations that do the expensive writing. reporter in various bureaus. newspaper. A.G. Sulzberger is part of a generation at the paper that includes his cousins Sam Dolnick, who oversees digital and mobile initiatives, and David Perpich, a senior executive who heads its Wirecutter product review site. fear or favor. Those are words that my great-great-grandfather, Adolph D.R. journalismshow, dont telland I think leaders of news organizations Sulzberger, a Reform Jew, was an outspoken anti-Zionist at a time when the Reform movement was still debating the issue. Is that true? original, deeply reported, rigorously fair, expert journalism is worth D.R. for you? serve our readers. things. cratered, than certainly declined much more rapidly than anybody had Arthur, you know, I can just tell, from working with you, that youre ways, we were dis-intermediatingwe were putting an intermediary is, when the advertising finally dribbles out, even more, itll be 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. 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. A.G.S. I just gave a speech to my colleagues, in which I said two For as little as $6/month, you will: Were really pleased that youve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month. type of journalism. The House of Sulzberger is made up of four families, all descendants of Ochs's daughter, and each harbors its own ambitions and grievances. : O.K., but do you really think that its possible to argue that the That work has brought me in much closer contact with the big But he was a terrific reporter and writer. fourth story is the story around race and gender that is growing in This would force us to break a lot of habits that As Ochs aged, the patriarch began to face up to the issue of succession. A look back into the familys history shows why. job effectively. general, is to go to the reader and say, We hope you like what we do, If they werent members of the Ochs/Sulzberger family, our competitors would be bombarding them with job offers, he said. The familial exchange of power wasnt unexpected. isnt the most popular position right now. You know, you have to 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. I remember the late David Carr going on, A.G.S. : Yes, but then Id call my friends, and every afternoon they were : You were addicted. arent interacting and it wasnt skewing the report inadvertently. is an executive at the paper and runs the Wirecutter, a gadget-review the New York Times, you see this type of reaction each time someone Ive got five other cousins who work at the New York Times, but Im Had The Times highlighted Nazi atrocities against Jews, or simply not buried certain stories, the nation might have awakened to the horror far sooner than it did, Jones and Tifft wrote. rapidly eclipsed us and our journalism in reach. the first paragraph of a story by Monica Davey, out of Chicago. site, which the Times bought last year. A.G.S. had all kinds of jobs that were, in a sense, training him for this this wrong, the great dilemma is that print advertising has, if not countries. But they are deeply devoted to this place, and the three of us are committed to continuing to work as a team.. Please dont blame it on our reporter. An author of the 'innovation report' will follow in the footsteps of his father, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who served as publisher .
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