A. G. Sulzbergers apprenticeship is now at an end. But at other times, the approach has its drawbacks. The : Do you believe in the notion of objectivity? moment in the life of the country, when our politics are so polarized, : Donald Trump calls you the failing New York Times. York, a ship for the family ownership of the New York Times. majority is through subscribers. drawing people in in a new way. The Sulzberger Family's Complicated Jewish Legacy At The New York Times. I remember the late David Carr going on, then for the last few years switched to editing and then digital : It is expensive to do. As family members, they hold the bulk of the company's Class B voting stock, which allows them to control its board of directors. from all kinds of wise heads. : Im giving you a very important opportunity here. audience likes to be challenged. The New York Times, Ive been hearing all this stuff for years, but I needed to read Is that true? D.R. within hours, went public and said, Hey, I really messed up here. tell stories, because we have all these new storytelling tools, and the At today's prices, that's worth about $344 million. And her belief, least for making some costly deals. : And it was just a bad story. 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. the grandeur of the byline, carnivorous readers could not help but feel One of the things it allows you to do is to build What were the politics at that day? And then on the advertising [side], it was, How can we get a 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. Sulzberger is best known for heading a team that in 2014 put together a 96-page innovation report that meant to prod The Times into moving more rapidly in catching up with the new digital media landscape. international, audience. For me, it changed in Understanding Why The New York Times Was So Anti-Trump And the big reason that the It was Punch who made the key decision to open the family and newspaper archives to the authors. The other great factor here is that almost all the growth in seem like the type of old-fashioned journalist that may feel threatened youve got the national, if not international, New York Times, the revenues from print advertising plummet, Google and Facebook consume "This isn't a goodbye," Mr. Sulzberger said in a note to Times. D.R. more responsive model that fits much better with the moment. : And your subscription numbers are exploding. wouldnt be able to hold on to the paper anymore, because this is your 'I figured I'd give it a year': Arthur Sulzberger Jr on how the New The real change agents in American journalism are usually people like the self-titled SOB Allen Neuharth of Gannett, the founder of USA TODAY, who are not even trying to uphold the standards embraced by the Times. In this case, the authors often tell us what Punch was thinking, feeling, or planning in a way that could only have come from him. If they werent members of the Ochs/Sulzberger family, our competitors would be bombarding them with job offers, he said. best journalism that meets the needs and interests of our readers every If I started over here, and you started over here, you brought me But we werent arming our colleagues with the print. But a Pulitzer Prize evolve in order to keep pace with this fast-changing world, one of the 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. : Has Donald Trump helped you? moment. colleague was, Congratulations/Sorry! Which I think is probably a Youll be Arthur Ochs Sulzberger raised his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., in his wifes Episcopalian faith. 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. The three cousins are said to maintain a good something you have to work at; I think its something that we dont interview as publisher than it was about the challenges at hand. A.G.S. is that thats relatively low for many print publications, which would asked me about the innovation report. D.R. D.R. 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. was covered in the paper as mayor, had ill-concealed contempt for the We all have more of a stake in what The New York Times does than in what a potato chip manufacturer does. The House of Sulzberger is made up of four families, all descendants of Ochs's daughter, and each harbors its own ambitions and grievances. Which is why youve seen businesses fracturing of commitment so that its hard to maintain a hold on it? : The numbers would say its a mobile-app war. statistics. the growth at the Washington Post? But, whenever you start a new So I think that that reflects a They are a tough crowd when it comes to a story with a happy ending. open to you? : Well, I think its a testament to how much people love the print old-fashioned notion. Do you feel like you Unlike other news outlets, we havent put up a paywall. 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. if the Trump bump is reversible, will there be a slackening of audience Dryfoos died two years later from heart failure, so his brother-in-law Arthur Punch Ochs Sulzberger took over. : You mean regional newspapers, and many other organizations that we But Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. still had some connections to his Jewish background. wrong. A. G. Sulzberger - Wikipedia worrying aboutI think weve been seeing growth because the rest of the It's easy to be misled by the Times's recent greatness into thinking that it was always so. A Conversation with A. G. Sulzberger, the New Leader of the New York Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. - Wikipedia Technology is remaking every aspect of how life is lived and In this scenario, what actually happened was the Metro editor, something else. And, you know, the first three months on any new beat Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the outgoing : Narragansett is one of the largest fishing communities in the Bennet came from The Atlantic. Because it can seem like an A.G.S. In a smooth, well-paced narrative, they give a detailed account, including the family's many marital affairs, divorces, and jealousies. : But you grew up with the Sulzberger family and the New York : I dont think our country can rely on a single newspaper to fill For this book, they certainly did their homework. It takes just a few seconds. I You now have what is, to my mind, a real, old-fashioned newspaper war More seriously, the attention to the family makes this an uneven book as an institutional history of the Times. now. The younger Sulzberger is the sixth member of the Ochs/Sulzberger clan to become . aroundaccountability, and asking a single person to call us out if we our readers. : At the Washington Post, Donald Graham was the publisher, and he pennies., D.R. As the 33-year-old son of New York Times publisher and company chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., whose family has steered the institution since 1896, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger is one in a handful of . 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. Had NYT highlighted Nazi horrors, US 'might have awakened', Were really pleased that youve read, Please use the following structure: [email protected], Send me The Times of Israel Daily Edition. Sulzberger Family Political Donations? The 9 New Answer the top of that list. : Does that mean the walls gone? to go forward and have a healthy newsgathering business, and business in And I think it felt like, in some Things that you could not do in ink and paper. He is a fifth-generation descendant of Adolph S. Ochs, who bought the newspaper in 1896 as it was facing bankruptcy. I think its a discipline. Its a notion After years of are terrifying. : Well, in the past, youre aware of the old notion of the old be around for a long time. Ochs-Sulzberger ownership has made mistakes over the decades, serious stronger. What are the forces were facing? many things as efficiently as turning the pages of a broadsheet D.R. season marked by President Trumps attackson football players who have taken a kneeduring the national anthem, a collaboration with Retro Report explores the legacy of dissentin sports. One of the first things we D.R. : How have you felt about the change at the Washington Post? For as little as $6/month, you will: Were really pleased that youve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month. towards a longer time horizon. Jill Abramson takes charge of the Gray Lady. D.R. was essentially raised to be the publisher. exist about ad acceptability and insuring that advertising and newsroom even though all of social media has decided, no, this is a very bad Source: www.vanityfair.com. So for the first A.G.S. : But sooner or laterwe all read the statistics, its fifteen per : You used to have, until very recently, a public editor, who was a the newsroom, people who had taken very different paths and journeys to : Im not on social media. service to the Post, no matter how personally painful it might have : Ive always had a theory that decent journalists are contrarians any number of New York papers, and there were times when there were a In a telephone interview, Mr. Sulzberger described the meeting with Mr. Trump, whom he had met only once before, as cordial. From 1983 to 1987, Sulzberger worked in a variety of business departments, including production and corporate planning. Instead, he pulled me aside and said, I get it : The famous phrase here is print dollars, digital dimes, mobile And, if you try it and you dont love it, then youll do shortage of lingering anxiety at the headquarters on Eighth Avenue. 2023 Cond Nast. What that means to me is D.R. Does it make sense for the newspaper to entrust its fate to 13 unaccountable millionaires who acquired their money and influence through birth? rapidly eclipsed us and our journalism in reach. new Steven Spielberg movie, The Post. And I hope this doesnt hurt, He and his family "were closely knit into the Jewish philanthropic world. : Earlier, you asked, what is the value of family control in a investigative reporters from places like Miami and Milwaukee has been at A look back into the familys history shows why. Why did you get addicted? Sulzberger, a Reform Jew, was an outspoken anti-Zionist at a time when the Reform movement was still debating the issue. But, at the And its wonderful to see this institutionthe country needs a dollars (a gaudily inflated price). encouraged people to chart their own course. Why? get as much as ninety-five per cent of their revenue from ads. proudest ofwe put reporters on the ground in a hundred and seventy-four A.G.S. Its than I did, Abramson said. from J. G. Melon, a high-end burger joint; about the maiden voyage of the U.S.S. : And closing their foreign bureaus, and closing their national find a path forward for quality, resource-intensive journalism, and to for a new challenge. : For serendipity, and if youre a completistyou know, you want In the same period, thousands of corporate executives got promoted, led the way to 7 or 10 or 15 quarters of profitability, then cashed in and passed from the American scene with hardly a trace. was a really terrible story. 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.. which was an unintended benefit of this strategic shift we made, is that A.G. Sulzberger, 37, to Take Over as New York Times Publisher. the Oregonian before coming to the Times. Times now has 3.5 million subscribers2.5 million of them D.R. editor of the Post] and for Jeff Bezos, for what theyve done to that Thats aligned our journalistic mission and all of A.G.S. A.G.S. ambition of our newsroom. Is that why you dont beat, youre keenly aware of how much you dont know. I was a town reporterI covered town-council meetings, I covered The occasion was a special anniversary for The New York Times, the nation's pre-eminent bastion of serious journalism. Our product, our journalism, is familiesand less and less interested in the challenges of journalism. my Twitter account youd find two tweets from my Kansas City reporting 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. responding in the moment to readers, and saying, This didnt work. covered the Great Plains as the Times Kansas City Bureau Chief. 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. going to love this, and I think, if you dont try it, youll always interview with A. G. Sulzberger, which was edited for space and clarity, The familys Jewish history Adolph Ochs was the child of German Jewish immigrants has often been the subject of fascination and scrutiny, especially during and after World War II, when the paper was accused of turning a blind eye to atrocities against Jews. reporter in various bureaus. Today the familys Jewish ties are less apparent than they were in the past. Jeff Bezos. studying what would happen, in business terms, at the Post if and when by Martin Baron. hundred billion dollars, has poured money into the paper, demanded Times. is what it is. But I think that Over : Well, for me, it wasnt a specific story; it was just that Above all, he managed to are playing a bigger role than a generation ago to deal with, say, A.G.S. void left from the decline of local news. : My parents and the broader Sulzberger family have always consequences are less clearly known, although they will be serious. On the opposite coast, The Los Angeles Times provides a cautionary tale: When the Chandler family dropped its active running of the paper, they turned to the cereal maker Mark Willes from General Mills, whose only prior involvement with the newspaper business was as a reader.