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Authors portray a newspaper, a family and power
Wednesday, November 03, 1999 By Bill Steigerwald, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
It isn't just journalists who pay daily homage to the clout and credibility of The New York Times.
As Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones show in "The Trust," their portrait of the two powerful families that have spent a century building the Times into a media and financial power, everyone from Wall Street to M Street acknowledges that the Times is the country's preeminent paper.
How it became America's "Paper of Record" was no accident. Making the paper comprehensive, reliable and impartial was the deliberate policy of the Ochses and Sulzbergers, the two families that have owned and operated the Times exclusively since Adolph Ochs bought the paper in the late 1890s. In their book Tifft and Jones, who are coming to Pittsburgh Nov. 10 for the Post-Gazette Book and Author Dinner, explain how the families preserved the Times' influence and reputation without betraying a public trust they held sacred .
QUESTION: Why is the New York Times so powerful today?
ALEX JONES: I think the Times is powerful because it has the ambition it has, and that is a reflection of this family's ambition for it. The difference that it has made to have this particular family in charge of this particular institution is evidenced by what happened in 1987.
The stock market crashed. The nation went into a recession, especially a newspaper recession. And New York was very, very hard hit -- harder than other places. The New York Times in the next four or five years lost 40 percent of its advertising linage. In each one of those years, the New York Times newspaper had an increase in its news budget.
There's not another newspaper in the United States that would lose 40 percent of its advertising and increase its news budget year after year. And that, I think, is what has made the Times the sort of defining brand name of American journalism.
Q: You say the Ochs have been the most powerful family in 20th century America?
A: I don't think there's any question about it. Let me explain why: First of all, they have not only owned the New York Times, they have run the New York Times. A family member has been at the head of the New York Times through all that time, and they have passed on that position -- which is tantamount, because of the Times' influence in government, political affairs and social affairs, to having an inherited cabinet post.
Let me give you other evidence of the power this family has had as its birthright. In the mid-1970s, U.S. News & World Report did a front-page cover article, "Who Runs America?" They invited business men and journalists and academics to talk about who were the most powerful individuals in the nation. The result was a list of 30 people, beginning with the president of the United States. Punch Sulzberger, who was then the publisher of the New York Times, was ranked 14th.
Ten years later they did they same thing again: "Who runs America?" The same list of 30. Again the president is first. Again Punch Sulzberger is 14th. But everybody above Punch had changed. If there had been such a cover story in 1910, Adolph Ochs would have been on that list. In 1940, Arthur Sulzberger would have been on that list. That's an indication of what the power of this family has been, because of the institution they've controlled.
Q: Yet you say Adolph Ochs didn't seek power, but sought the admiration of society and his peers.
A: One of the reasons they have been able to keep and marshal and husband their power, was that weren't really about power for its own sake, the way, say, William Randolph Hearst was. Adolph Ochs was not obsessed with power. What he was obsessed with was a good reputation, a good name. Because of his huge effort to get that good name through this institution, he managed to make that institution the great newspaper and the great power that it was. The power came along with it.
Q: Looking back over 100 years of Ochs family control, what has made the paper great and so consistently powerful?
A: I think the way to look at is, Adolph Ochs created a mystique about the pre-eminence and the quality of the New York Times before it was true. Then when it became a successful business, he spent the money to make it true. That is what this family has done generation after generation.
They've paid a price for these things. Despite the fact that this institution that they control is worth a fortune, it is inconceivable that they would sell it. So it doesn't really reflect an asset that has value in that kind of context. We had a conversation with every contemporary member of the family and we asked them the same thing: If you could increase your wealth by a factor of five, by simply letting the New York Times become one of the best newspapers in the United States, would you be willing to make that trade? They laughed in our face when we asked them that.
I think there is no question that Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is secure in his job even if the stock price takes a nose dive. He is not secure in his job if you start to read articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about how the New York Times is not what it used to be and is no longer the paper that it was. Then he better look out, because the family would not take that.
Q: Has the Times always been politically liberal?
A: Oh, no no no. I think the way to think of the Times, much more than as liberal, is that it is very much an establishment newspaper. It has been from the very beginning. Its liberal perspective is very much within a centrist perspective. If you want to drive a true liberal nuts, say that The New York Times is a liberal newspaper. The paper has been criticized in the most violent terms by both the far right and the far left. But given that centrist position the way it now, it is certainly on the liberal side of that centrist perspective.
It was not always that. Adolph Ochs and Arthur Hays Sulzberger were much more conservative. And Punch Sulzberger himself was more conservative than the editorial page of the institution. It also depends on what your issue is. The Times was more progressive on the issue of race, for instance, than certainly it was until very recently on the subject of gay rights.
It really depends on the time and the circumstance, but the Times has mostly, and without any exception throughout, been very much part of the media establishment and the establishment of power that runs this country. And they have always taken that role very seriously. They comment about the presidency. They are not a fringe institution and their perspective, liberal or conservative, is within that relatively narrow framework.
Q: Is it still impartial today? It made its name in the early 1900s as an impartial news source.
A: I don't think it is. There was time under Adolph Ochs and under Arthur Hays Sulzberger when there was almost a scientific objectivity about it. It was a news utility, as far as Adolph Ochs was concerned. That's why it published so many speeches and sermons and white papers and reports and things like that.
After the early 1950s, and especially starting in the 1960s and onward, it's become much more analytical. They have created these vehicles within The New York Times for being more analytical and subjective without crossing the line to editorialism, which is still forbidden at The New York Times.
Sometimes it's hard to tell where analysis ends and editorializing begins. But I think The New York Times tries to label news analysis as something explicitly of itself, even though it's in the news columns. The writing of the straight news stories is supposed to be objective, but even within those you see more interpretation, because I think the way The New York Times looks at it, people know the facts from television and the Internet. What The New York Times provides them now are very, very well-versed reporters who know what they are talking about and are able to give the people who are reading the Times the benefit of their knowledge as well as reporting the facts.
Q: Are the Times and its owners ready for the Digital Age and the competition of the new media?
A: I can tell you, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is working on that night and day. That's the big, big, big problem and the big challenge facing The New York Times. I think if anybody's going to be able to do it, they're going to be able to do it. But what they're going to have to do is figure out a way to be in that Digital Age -- which means video, audio, Internet -- news-around-the-clock kind of stuff at the same time they remain The New York Times. To the credit of The New York Times, the idea of remaining and keeping true to the values of The New York Times is an obsession of the institution, not something that people throw up casually.
Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones join biographers Victoria Price and Roger Kahn and novelist Sena Jeter Naslund at the Post-Gazette Book and Author Dinner Nov. 10. The event at the Pittsburgh Hilton is cosponsored by Barnes & Noble Booksellers and benefits the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council. For tickets, call 412-263-1421.
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