Sulzberger, 86, led Times in Pentagon Papers era

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (center), then-New York Times president and publisher, attends a July 1, 1971, news conference after the Supreme Court ruled that the Times could continue publishing the Pentagon Papers, a series of classified reports on the Vietnam War.
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (center), then-New York Times president and publisher, attends a July 1, 1971, news conference after the Supreme Court ruled that the Times could continue publishing the Pentagon Papers, a series of classified reports on the Vietnam War.

— Former New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who led the newspaper to new levels of influence and profit while standing up for press freedom during some of the most significant moments in 20th-century journalism, died Saturday. He was 86.

Sulzberger, who went by the nickname “Punch” and served with the Marine Corps before joining the Times staff, first as a reporter, and then following his father and grandfather as publisher, died at his home in Southampton, N.Y., after a long illness, his family announced.

During his three-decade tenure, the newspaper won 31 Pulitzer Prizes, published the Pentagon Papers and won a libel case in New York Times v. Sullivan that established important First Amendment protections for the press.

“Punch, the old Marine captain who never backed down from a fight, was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the press,” his son, and current Times publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., said in a statement. He said his father’s refusal to back down in the paper’s free-speech battles “helped to expand access to critical information and to prevent government censorship and intimidation.”

In an era of declining newspaper readership, the Times’ weekday circulation climbed from 714,000 when Sulzberger became publisher in 1963 to 1.1 million upon his retirement as publisher in 1992. Over the same period, the annual revenue of the Times’ corporate parent rose from $100 million to $1.7 billion.

Sulzberger was the only grandson of Adolph S. Ochs, the son of Bavarian immigrants who took over the Times in 1896 and built it into the nation’s most influential newspaper.

The family retains control to this day, holding a special class of shares that give them more powerful voting rights than other stockholders.

Power was thrust on Sulzberger at age 37 after the sudden death of his brotherin-law in 1963. He had been in the Times’ executive suite for eight years in a role he later described as “vice president in charge of nothing.”

But Sulzberger directed the Times’ evolution from an encyclopedic paper of record to a more reader-friendly product that reached into the suburbs and across the nation.

During his tenure, the Times started a national edition, bought its first color presses, and introduced — to the chagrin of some hardnews purists — popular and lucrative new sections covering topics such as food and entertainment.

Sulzberger also improved the paper’s bottom line, pulling it and its parent company out of a tailspin in the mid-1970s and lifting both to unprecedented profitability a decade later.

In 1992, Sulzberger relinquished the publisher’s job to his 40-year-old son but remained chairman of The New York Times Co. Sulzberger retired as chairman and chief executive of the company in 1997. His son then was named chairman. Sulzberger stayed on the board of directors until 2002.

President Barack Obama said Sulzberger was “a firm believer in the importance of a free and independent press — one that isn’t afraid to seek the truth, hold those in power accountable, and tell the stories that need to be told.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he “changed the course of American history with his journalistic decisions.”

Significant free-press and free-speech precedents were established during Sulzberger’s years as publisher, most notably the Times v. Sullivan case. It resulted in a landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling that shielded the press from libel lawsuits by public officials unless they could prove actual malice.

In 1971 the Times led the First Amendment fight to keep the government from suppressing the Pentagon Papers, a series of classified reports on the Vietnam War. Asked by a reporter who at the Times made the decision to publish the papers, Sulzberger gestured toward his chest and silently mouthed, “me.”

Sulzberger read the more than 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers before deciding to publish them. After Sulzberger read the papers, he was asked what he thought. “Oh, I would think about 20 years to life,” he responded.

But in a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually sided with the Times and The Washington Post, which had begun publishing the papers a few days after the Times.

New York City’s mayor from 1978 to 1989, Ed Koch, said Sulzberger had great humility, despite his extraordinary influence.

“With enormous power and authority he was a humble a person as you could ever meet,” Koch said Saturday. “People with enormous power often dominate a room. He did not. And yet the power and authority was there.”

Sulzberger was born in New York City on Feb. 5, 1926, the only son of Arthur Hays Sulzberger and his wife, Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, Adolph’s only child. One of his three sisters was named Judy, and from early on he was known as “Punch,” from the puppet characters Punch and Judy.

Sulzberger’s grandfather led the paper until his death in 1935, when he was followed by Sulzberger’s father, who remained at the helm until he retired in 1961.

Meanwhile, Arthur served in the Marines during World War II and, briefly, in Korea. He later observed, in a typically self-deprecating remark, that “My family didn’t worry about me for a minute. They knew that if I got shot in the head it wouldn’t do any harm.”

Except for a year at The Milwaukee Journal, 1953-54, the younger Sulzberger spent his entire career at the family paper. He joined after graduating from Columbia College in 1951. He worked in European bureaus for a time and was back in New York by 1955, but found he had little to do.

Sulzberger had not been expected to assume power at the paper for years. His father passed control to Orvil E. Dryfoos, his oldest daughter’s husband, in 1961. But two years later Dryfoos died suddenly of heart disease at 50. Sulzberger’s parents named him publisher, the fourth family member to hold the title.

“We had all hoped that Punch would have many years more training before having to take over,” his mother said. Sulzberger relied on senior editors and managers for advice, and quickly developed a reputation as a solid leader.

At various times, Sulzberger was a director or chairman of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, American Newspaper Publishers Association and American Press Institute. He was a director of The Associated Press from 1975 to 1984.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 09/30/2012

Upcoming Events