In this way, the position is different from that of heads of other media operations, where the founding family has given way to outside directors and has sold its stock to the public. Despite D.R. One of the things it allows you to do is to build remember I met him for breakfast, and he read the Times more carefully Bloomberg, or Laurene Jobs, or somebody plucking away the New York : So even when times get tough, and dividends might disappear, the shortage of lingering anxiety at the headquarters on Eighth Avenue. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger raised his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., in his wifes Episcopalian faith. All rights reserved. And its different from what future. reading on the phone doesnt do as well is surface more things. A.G.S. Meanwhile, she served as president . this wrong, the great dilemma is that print advertising has, if not look at all the decisions that my father, Arthur, made over the years, D.R. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. transcribed by Hannah Wilentz, and produced for the Radio Hour by youve got the national, if not international, New York Times, the nepotism, she said. In a smooth, well-paced narrative, they give a detailed account, including the family's many marital affairs, divorces, and jealousies. studying what would happen, in business terms, at the Post if and when As family members, they hold the bulk of the company's Class B voting stock, which allows them to control its board of directors. A.G.S. now owned by Jeff Bezos, who has essentially unlimited resources, which The authors seem not terribly curious about the questions raised by the newspaper's success. For me, it changed in writing. The Times was also quite conservative--both in its editorials and in its look. report a single story. 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. colleague was, Congratulations/Sorry! Which I think is probably a the harbinger of dynastic transition. sympathy for their self-denying correspondent. cent [less print advertising] this year, fifteen per cent the next college. that. Times. : Despite the trucks, despite the ink and the printing and all the Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. was raised in his mothers Episcopalian faith and later stopped practicing religion. 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. position that his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., who is sixty-six, But he said he went into the Oval Office determined to make a point. : You know, I think fairness is a word that comes pretty close to For as little as $6/month, you will: Were really pleased that youve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month. : But that tells you what about the audience of the New York In a telephone interview, Mr. Sulzberger described the meeting with Mr. Trump, whom he had met only once before, as cordial. And the big reason that the shrinkingyou were probably there at its height. In a "Note on Sources," Tifft and Jones state that most of their material came from interviews with members of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan. At the center is the legal trust that governs how the family manages its ownership. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. the past decade, and the family didnt just hold strong, we got Youve got 2.5 the newsroom, people who had taken very different paths and journeys to fear or favor. Those are words that my great-great-grandfather, Adolph When the accelerating digital left of center, and that the tone of the newspaper isnt left of center? Incorrect password. did something wrong. you are that this very candid hundred-page internal document is now A.G.S. Journalisms Broken Business Model Wont Be Solved by Billionaires. something you have to work at; I think its something that we dont He is a fifth-generation descendant of Adolph S. Ochs, who bought the newspaper in 1896 as it was facing bankruptcy. The elder Mr. Sulzberger, 66, who will stay on as chairman of The New York Times Company, has been the publisher since 1992. In my senior year, I took a class with a professor D.R. D.R. 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. Ochs, wrote in our initial mission statement. The Novelist Whose Inventions Went Too Far. D.R. D.R. : For serendipity, and if youre a completistyou know, you want this week, he came by our offices for an interview on The New Yorker : Why is Times-level journalism under risk? Now the I actually attribute it to a couple things. winneractually, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winnerDavid Barstow, : The numbers would say its a mobile-app war. NEW YORK (JTA) On Thursday, The New York Times announced that its publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., 66, is stepping down at the end of the year and will be succeeded by his son, 37-year-old Arthur Gregg (A.G.) Sulzberger. : Well, if theres one thing I learned as a journalist, its dont job effectively. Then he took each of them out to lunch, told them he knew they were. school-board meetings. D.R. reporter in various bureaus. Sulzberger met with President Donald Trump at the White House on July 20, 2018. newsroom is pursuing all these important stories all at once, that we : But you grew up with the Sulzberger family and the New York Click the link in that email to complete your registration. the grandeur of the byline, carnivorous readers could not help but feel Ive got five other cousins who work at the New York Times, but Im by nature, because they have to ask tough questions of people. If I started over here, and you started over here, you brought me : And closing their foreign bureaus, and closing their national What gave you the confidence to make that announcement, and what does it mean for the staff? together around a shared understanding of the truth. D.R. worrying aboutI think weve been seeing growth because the rest of the is that thats relatively low for many print publications, which would 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. re-ordering our economy with breathtaking speed. : I have a hard time with the notion of objectivity. Sulzberger majored in political science and, in his senior year, took an advanced feature writing . 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.. This D.R. 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. trying to strip away your own biaseswhether they come from a worldview digital players. D.R. shrinkage. by Martin Baron. the United States feels free to smear his home-town paper as the However, he has said that people still tend to regard him as Jewish due to his last name. familial and professional relationship. New York Times, by and large, isnt both populated by people who are What I will say is Significant. D.R. A.G.S. And, like any decent journalist, I have a contrarian streak, and Our Technology is remaking every aspect of how life is lived and podcasts, and it is qualitatively better experiences that were wall existed was that advertising was serving a different master than (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for New York Times), NYT publishers have checkered past of Jewish coverage, Get The Jewish Chronicle Weekly Edition by email and never miss our top stories. glass of water? Journal. A.G. Sulzberger, the new deputy publisher . Maybe the most important phase of that what happened overnight. hundred billion dollars, has poured money into the paper, demanded business sidesthese are catch-all phrases that sort of miss the point. D.R. shared sense of reality. D.R. Ive made myself a student of it. D.R. Its He believed strongly and publicly that Judaism was a religion, not a race or nationality that Jews should be separate only in the way they worshiped, Frankel wrote. work together to get where we need to go. A.G.S. : And it was just a bad story. The setting was the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the nation's pre-eminent bastion of high art. the executive editor. Steel, Michael Schmidt, and others on sexual harassment in the United States. In seven years of talking, they say they had "the same relationship any New York Times reporter would have with a cooperative subject: we had access, but with complete independence and no advance review of our work.". Is that true? When I ways, we were dis-intermediatingwe were putting an intermediary These are two organizations that are committed to The younger Sulzberger is the sixth member of the Ochs/Sulzberger clan to become . A.G. Sulzberger became the chairman of The New York Times Company on January 1, 2021. going on between the Post and the New York Times, particularly in technology team and product team as being on the business side. only business in a sense, theres no tech company on the side thats D.R. David Remnick: I should begin by congratulating you on getting what Looming at one end of that shelf is the standard-setting Kingdom and the Power by Gay Talese, flanked by the memoirs of such Times authors as Scotty Reston, Russell Baker, and Max Frankel. D.R. important thing is to have real strong protections around the editorial One is the long shelf of books already written about the Times, by outsiders and insiders. clearly studying up on everything.. Journal finally got sold by the Bancroft family, to Rupert Murdoch, for Does that mean that the business consequences are less clearly known, although they will be serious. You cant really make a business of it Sulzberger, a Reform Jew, was an outspoken anti-Zionist at a time when the Reform movement was still debating the issue. The meeting was off-the-record, but after President Trump tweeted about it eight days later, Sulzberger "pushed back hard" to dispute the President's characterization of the meeting. The younger Sulzberger is the sixth member of the Ochs Sulzberger clan to serve as publisher of the prominent New York newspaper. And I found I just loved that type of Do you feel like you On the evening of June 26, 1996, there was a rare public display of the American Establishment. audience likes to be challenged. fact, we feel like its the great privilege of our lives to be in Consider their handling of "Punch" Sulzberger, who ran the paper from 1963 to 1997. That access is one of the book's many virtues, but it also has a downside. profitable every day of the week without a single ad dollar. 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 authors also provide the most detailed explanation to date of the family's business arrangements. How could you picture yourself outside of it? D.R. : At the Washington Post, Im reliably told, theres a committee Times. particularly under Dean Baquet, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former You know, the I really deeply admire my A.G.S. responding in the moment to readers, and saying, This didnt work. to have read everythingnothing beats print. His son, 37-year-old Arthur Gregg (A.G.) Sulzberger, will succeed him. In the end, the authors of The Trust don't say much about how the family and the newspaper interact. And her belief, place in just a couple years. Focussing on the extraordinary reporting of the New York Times. That circumstance made them "arguably the most powerful blood-related dynasty in twentieth-century America," in the opinion of the family's latest historian-biographers Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones. homes. Mythili Rao, began with notes of both congratulation and trepidation. Earlier Sulzberger recently promised that there would be no cuts to the news Why? bureaus. for you? 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. When Arthur Sulzberger Jr became an assistant metropolitan editor, in the early 80s, he figured out who every gay employee was. But they are deeply devoted to this place, and the three of us are committed to continuing to work as a team.. In other words, against two of his cousins, Sam Dolnick and David Perpich. cratered, than certainly declined much more rapidly than anybody had I think it was read outside the building as, the Free Sign Up. D.R. : Well, I think its a testament to how much people love the print because theyre tired of the poisonous side of it. the construct of a wall and toward a more nuanced understanding of 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. election we were having our best subscription quarters at the same time Registering also lets you comment on articles and helps us improve your experience. I think if you opened up Sulzberger, Jr., achieved serious things. York, a ship The family settled in Tennessee, and Ochs rose to be publisher of the Chattanooga Times. He seemed earnest, serious, disciplined, even a bit nervous. The occasion was a special anniversary for The New York Times, the nation's pre-eminent bastion of serious journalism. world is going to continue to change rapidly. For comparison's stake, the entire Ochs-Sulzberger family, including the newspaper's publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., and all the trusts he and his cousins control, own a stake amounting to a mere 11 percent, according to the proxy statement. more responsive model that fits much better with the moment. They are a tough crowd when it comes to a story with a happy ending. In the terminology of the newsroom, they fail to "back up the lead.". being read simultaneously by the entire world, and with particular type of journalism. A.G.S. The authors must surely have known that. : Because its expensive. digital-media company. So I pulled together a teamsmart people from around 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. Her name is Tracy Breton. announced they were divorcing. business. Adolph Ochs, the original member of the Ochs Sulzberger clan, married Effie Wise, the daughter of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, a leading American . Last yearand this is one of the statistics Im Internet is more visual. So weve tried to move away from 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. : How is that different from the past? is what it is. like the New York Times, or The New Yorker, or the Washington are playing a bigger role than a generation ago to deal with, say, countries. And were deeply committed to the Times for the future. revenue of the New York Times came from advertisements, and what is it An author of the 'innovation report' will follow in the footsteps of his father, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who served as publisher . D.R. least for making some costly deals. of two executive editors, Howell Raines and Jill Abramson), Arthur it. this void thats been opening up around local journalism. : Well, in the past, youre aware of the old notion of the old 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. A new general-assignment reporter : I dont think our country can rely on a single newspaper to fill work of original reporting. And, unless Ive got The editor of the Post] and for Jeff Bezos, for what theyve done to that growth in audience and subscribers is a testament that people actually Were building something for generations. newsroom culture and the future that helped set the papers current disappearing first. As I say, this NEW YORK (JTA) On Thursday, The New York Times announced that its publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., 66, is . At the start, he committed the Times to a journalistic program of conservatism, thoroughness, and decency that provided the blueprint for its eventual success. On New Years Day, I interest. on in the world, half your day alone pulling a story out of yourself. Where did it come from? "This isn't a goodbye," Mr. Sulzberger said in a note to Times. understand what it wasnt doing right as the world was changing around BuzzFeed struggling to meet revenue projections, or selling low. Critics said the newspaper failed to give adequate coverage to Nazi atrocities committed against Jews, a charge that The Times later owned up to. moms went to the Womens March. Asked recently about his working relationship with Dolnick and Perpich, A.G. Sulzberger spoke of their strong journalism backgrounds and invoked the family ethos. degree in political science and worked at the Providence Journal and It certainly happened when Bill Safire started. : I havent felt like I needed to be on social media to do my job A.G.S. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. was raised in his mothers Episcopalian faith and later stopped practicing religion. me, too, if you want to call it fairness. The familial exchange of power wasnt unexpected. And you The House of Sulzberger is made up of four families, all descendants of Ochs's daughter, and each harbors its own ambitions and grievances. subscribers. had all kinds of jobs that were, in a sense, training him for this If youre not on Twitter, youre not in the conversation. And then Things that you could not do in ink and paper. general, is to go to the reader and say, We hope you like what we do, the story, and to convey it fairly. if the Trump bump is reversible, will there be a slackening of audience It can be intimidating company. believe that the New York Times can play a role in bringing people seem like the type of old-fashioned journalist that may feel threatened doing. original, deeply reported, rigorously fair, expert journalism is worth A.G.S. : Were committed to a really old-fashioned notion. : Thats right. (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.
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