Arthur Sulzberger

So how bad is it that Morgan Stanley sold its 7.2 percent ownership stake in The New York Times Company? Not as bad as it sounds.

"Believe me, Arthur Sulzberger won’t be losing sleep over this," said Edward Atorino, a media analyst at The Benchmark Company.

"Everyone on Wall Street knows that Morgan Stanley made a futile effort to affect some changes at The New York Times. They sold this stock at a big loss."

Morgan Stanley bought into the Times in 1996 and has been critical of the company's dual-class share structure where investors like Morgan Stanley can gobble up most of the Class A shares, but the Sulzberger family calls most of the shots.

Mr. Atorino said Morgan Stanley's decision won't really hurt The Times—if anything it's probably a relief.

"Morgan Stanley didn't care about the editorial base, they just cared that the stock number went up," he explained. "I have a feeling Arthur isn't worried about this."

Today, the New York Times unveiled it’s narrower format—as reported here. But there’s more: Foreign correspondents are being asked not to be so wordy, according to new guidelines obtained by The Observer.  read more »

Someone—Mark Twain, maybe—once said: “Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel.” A modern corollary to the saying might be: “Never taunt a man who owns his own talk radio network.” But Ed Koch and Al D'Amato seem none too intimidated by the return of Mark Green, the new president of Air America Radio, to New York 1’s weekly “Wise Guys” roundtable segment. "I've been looking forward to this. I've been dreaming of this," Koch told me when I hung out with all three at the news network’s studios before yesterday's edition of the show. "We need a little irritant,” D’Amato added. “So, Mark provides the irritant, and that provides the zip."

“Wise Guys,” for those who are uninitiated, is a kind of cross between “Meet the Press” and a Friar’s Club roast. D’Amato, the Republican senator-turned-wily superfixer, weighs in from the right. Koch, the mayor-turned-movie-reviewer, brings perspective from Planet Koch. But the show has been missing a reliable voice from the left for the last year or so, ever since Green left his slot to run for attorney general. (Unsuccessfully.) The show’s producers replaced Green with a rotating series of guests: Carl McCall, Roberto Ramirez, Judith Hope, Bill Cunningham and Bob Kerrey. But none of them had Green’s game. So now he’s back, rested, ready and, yes indeed, tan.

"What I love about ‘Wise Guys’ is that it's an exchange of opinions, rather than a monologue of insults,” Green said. As a counterexample, he cited the New York Post editorial page—which had its share of fun with Green back in 2001, when he was running for mayor. (Unsuccessfully.) “Bob McManus doesn't want the other side. He can lecture to the flock and feel like he's convincing, without having to expose himself to someone saying 'on the other hand.'"

"Well, to be fair," D'Amato interjected, in typical “Wise Guys” fashion. "You can say the same thing about the New York Times, which runs ultra-liberal philosophy that appeals to that base." He went on to say, "most of the time, they're beating little Pinch’s drum to make up for the fact that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth." (If you don’t know who Bob McManus and “Pinch” are, this may not be your kind of show.)

Despite what one might think, D’Amato is not Green’s primary antagonist. “I only pile on slightly,” the former senator said. “I become the referee because Edward and Mark go at it.”

Will the dynamic change now, I asked, now that Green has returned as the president of his own media outlet? "You mean we have a dispute, he takes his marbles and goes to his station and let's us have it?” Koch asked. He laughed heartily.

Green, shifting into his earnest mode, leaned forward, and assured me that he would not be ordering the likes of Thom Hartmann and Randi Rhodes Steve Earle to pursue his political adversaries. "The talent at Air America radio would kill me if I tried something like that,” he said.

Green paused for a moment.

Now," he added, "I do have a show on Air America Radio on the weekends..."

Remember the good old days of angry email exchanges between Barney Calame and Bill Keller?

Now, award-winning media critic Calame is giving credit to his boss, for deciding to continue on with the public editor position.

Back in January, that was still up for debate. Here's what Keller told The Observer:

"Over the next couple of months, as Barney's term enters the home stretch, I'll be taking soundings from the staff, talking it over with the masthead, and consulting with Arthur," meaning publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., wrote Bill Keller, The Times' executive editor, in an e-mail to The Observer.

But last month, WWD reported that there would be a third public editor, and (one-time Barney hater) Jack Shafer started naming names.

While Calame didn't get into specifics on who should be the next public editor, he did heap praise on the "big shots" at the Times in yesterday's column:

Mr. Keller is now seeking someone to continue the public editor function when my fixed two-year term ends next month.... So if sometime next year the public editor describes in this space a journalistic lapse at the paper, readers would be wise to remember that Mr. Keller deserves some of the credit for sticking with the process that brought it to light.

--Michael Calderone

   read more »

“On the First Amendment,” Judith Miller said, “I am a hard-liner.”  read more »

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the New York Times, has taken some flack for sounding a bit glum about the prospects for print journalism at the World Economic Conference, held last month in Davos.

On Feb. 8, the newspaper Ha'aretz quoted Mr. Sulzberger thusly, responding to a question about whether the Times will still be printed on paper in five years:

"I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either."

On Wednesday, in a speech to Times employees, Mr. Sulzberger plans to clarify the message attributed to him in Ha'aretz. The Times supplied the Observer with a portion of his text in advance:

"We are continuing to invest in our newspapers, for we believe that they will be around for a very long time. This point of view is not about nostalgia or a love of newsprint. Instead, it is rooted in fundamental business realities: Our powerful and trusted print brands continue to draw educated and affluent audiences.

"Traditional print newspaper audiences are still significantly larger than their Web counterparts. Print continues to command high levels of reader engagement. And, of course, we still make most of our money from print advertising and circulation revenue. And yes, I remember what I said here last year and what I was supposed to have said last month at Davos about not having a printed product in five years time.

"So let me clear the air on this issue. It is my heartfelt view that newspapers will be around--in print--for a long time. But I also believe that we must be prepared for that judgment to be wrong. My five-year timeframe is about being ready to support our news, advertising and other critical operations on digital revenue alone ...whenever that time comes."

--Michael Calderone

Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, who died at age 97 in 1990, has a place in American Jewish history. Her grandfather, Isaac M. Wise, founded the first Jewish seminary in the U.S., the Hebrew Union College. Her father, Adolph Ochs, bought the Times in 1896 and made it the great paper it is. Today the Times publisher is her grandson, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.

In 1976, when Mrs. Sulzberger was in her mid-80s, she granted an interview to the American Jewish Committee. The interviewer (the late Elliott M. Sanger, of WQXR), asked her about Jewish stuff.

Q. How important do you think the survival of Israel is to the security of the Jews in this country?

A. I don't know. I don't suppose it really basically would affect the survival.

Q. Well—survival I think is a very strong word.

A. It will arouse anti-Semitism in some sides and in other sides it'll react the other way, depending on the type of person. At the time of Hitler I know there were people who thought, well, he had a good point.

Q. Yes, that the Jews had it coming to them.

A. And of course it's always easier to hate than to understand, you don't need to use your your brains.

Q. That's right. The next question is one that you, I think, have had some experience with and I don't know whether you wish to answer it. How do you respond to your children's marrying someone of a different faith?

A. It depends on the person they marry. Some of them I'm just delighted with and one in particular I wasn't so pleased, but that was purely the individual..

Q. It had nothing to do with the religion?

A. No....

Q. What difference has it made that you are Jewish?

A. My father always said if he hadn't been a Jew he would have had more difficulty making a success in life because he felt the pressure that was brought upon him to prove himself and also the lack of social diversion had helped him... It's made me more tolerant, more understanding of people who suffered against prejudice... I don't want to let down my ancestors. Because I feel that people over the years have sacrificed so much for their tradition and their place. Nothing on the face of the earth would ever make me convert...

A few comments. Mrs. Sulzberger was an assimilating German Jew, and a very worldly woman. You will note that the interviewer tries to push her into chauvinistic statements about Israel and Jewishness, and she refuses to go there. Indeed, her husband, former Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, was at times an anti-Zionist. Two things she says make me smile. First is her comment that her father was a success because of the Jewish absence of "social diversion." Then there is her take on intermarriage. She shows that you can love your Jewishness and also love your assimilation, love your non-Jewish relatives.

There used to be a word for this attitude in Jewish culture: liberal.

(The transcript is at the NYPL's Jewish Division)

In September, New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. embraced self-sacrifice.  read more »

Today, The Observer reported that Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. has responded to the Oct. 19 letter sent to him on behalf of the Boston Newspaper Guild. Senator Ted Kennedy, and over two dozen political and labor leaders, signed the union letter that criticized the New York Times Company's management of the Boston Globe.

After the jump is the entire Sulzberger response, and a reply by Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild.  read more »

-Michael Calderone

The New York Times announced this afternoon that deputy editorial-page editor Andrew Rosenthal will replace Gail Collins as editorial-page editor January 1. The annoucement quotes publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. calling Rosenthal "a born editorial writer."

And how! The release describes Rosenthal's journalistic background, including stints as a Washington correspondent, Denver bureau reporter and AP sports stringer. It does not mention his earliest connection with the profession--and the Times: his birth, in 1956, to a celebrated young foreign correspondent named A.M. Rosenthal.

Collins will depart for book leave, according to the release, and will return as an op-ed columnist.

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and his cousin, Michael Golden, the Times' vice-chairman, announced this morning in an internal Times memo that they would forgo stock compensation for this and next year. Instead, the money—approximately $2 million for 2006 alone— will be used for a bonus pool "to reward exceptional performance by employees who don't participate in the Company's annual bonus plan." The full memo follows.  read more »

Arthur Sulzberger Jr. urged SUNY New Paltz grads to stick to their guns and have courage.

Here is a simple test of the Times courage. Stephen Walt and Kaavya Viswanathan are both Harvard authors who published the most significant writing of their lives this spring. Go to the Times site, the search box, and type in their names for the past 90 days. "Stephen Walt" : Seven results. One article, six letters. Now type in Kaavya Viswanathan : 33 results. Looks like most are articles: about 20.

Of course, Viswanathan is the 19-year-old sophomore whose plagiarized novel, called Opal something, became a bestseller, then a scandal among the chattering classes (including moi).

While Walt is the 50-year-old Harvard dean who co-authored the bombshell paper on the Israel lobby that is being passed among government ministers around the world, is the talk of the State Department, and has (even the Forward will tell you this) "triggered an escalating debate on the influence of Israel and Jewish organizations." Nope, The Times can't touch that with a bargepole.

I notice that rightwingers are upset about Arthur M. Sulzberger Jr.'s first commencement speech, a couple weeks back at New Paltz. In which he embraced liberal values. No!

I thought he made a pretty good point:

When I graduated from college in 1974, my fellow students and I had just ended the war in Vietnam and ousted President Nixon. Okay, that's not quite true. Yes, the war did end and yes, Nixon did resign in disgrace but maybe there were larger forces at play.

Either way, we entered the real world committed to making it a better, safer, cleaner, more equal place. We were determined not to repeat the mistakes of our predecessors. We had seen the horrors and futility of war and smelled the stench of corruption in government. Our children, we vowed, would never know that.

So, well, sorry. It wasn't supposed to be this way. You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land...

Does The New York Times need a change of ownership?  read more »

Does The New York Times need a change of ownership?  read more »

The top editor of the Times, the Mississippi-born Turner Catledge, had made it known that he hoped t  read more »

New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. gave the first of his 2006 State of the Times addresses at 10:30 this morning at the New Amsterdam Theatre. In his opening remarks, Sulzberger discussed the paper's efforts to expand its online and digital operations in a newspaper industry that's mired in struggle. "The intro was clearly about how tumultuous things are," one staffer said.

Things were also a bit tumultuous in the open question-and-answer period following Sulzberger's scripted remarks. Several staffers asked Sulzberger about stock grants awarded to senior Times executives, citing an Observer report that showed Sulzberger receiving some $800,000 in shares in 2005, while CEO Janet Robinson received $2 million in shares and $4 million in options.

In response, Sulzberger told the audience that his compensation is set at 60 percent of what average executives in his position earn.

Staffers also asked the publisher why he had ended the employee stock-purchase program, which had allowed staffers to buy New York Times Company stock at a 15 percent discount. Sulzberger said the decision to eliminate the program was a "painful choice to make," according to a staffer present--but that since the New York Times' stock isn't gaining value, "staffers shouldn't worry about it."

--Gabriel Sherman

After a 10-month study, the New York Times Diversity Council issued its confidential internal report yesterday. The 39-page document, made available to staffers, describes The Times as "a newspaper at risk" on diversity matters and says the paper is "losing ground in comparison to business that are among the leaders in diversity."

The council, a 23-member group including newsroom and business employees, was founded in 2004, in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal. The "Jayson Blair debacle continues to haunt the Times and continues to affect diversity efforts, according to dozens of interviews with employees," its report declares.

The report says that no evidence connects Blair's transgressions to the diversity efforts then in place at The Times, but that the perception of such a link still lingers: "[in] the minds of many, however, Mr. Blair remains an example of newspaper diversity run amok."

"Many in the newsroom said they believed the Blair case had a lasting, deleterious effect on the way minority reporters and editors were viewed, both inside and outside the newsroom," the report says.

The council was chaired by picture editor Jose Lopez and vice president for real-estate development Hussain Ali-Khan. Managing editor Jill Abramson was its advisor.

According to the report, the Times newsroom is currently 82.5 percent white, slightly less than the industry average of 86.5 percent. Only 14 percent of newsroom managers are minorities, the council found, and there are currently no minorities on the newspaper masthead and only one nonwhite on the company's executive committee.

"[W]omen and minorities remain underrepresented at the Times and minorities are seriously underrepresented in its managerial ranks," the report says.

In 2003 and 2004, three senior managers who were nonwhite left The Times, including managing editor Gerald Boyd, who resigned after the Blair debacle. "This was a major blow to the diversity of the senior management ranks," the report says, "but more disturbing, it exposed the newspaper's lack of depth in diversity among managers."

The council defined diversity in terms of employees' race, gender and sexual orientation. Religious and political differences were not accounted for.

The report also raises the question of news judgment, challenging the decision to have run the August 9, 2005 obituary of Ebony magazine magnate John Johnson inside the paper: "Some African-Americans believed Mr. Johnson's obituary deserved front-page placement and saw the fact that it wasn't played there as a case of white editors failing to recognize his cultural significance."

The report issues eight recommendations meant to increase diversity. Senior management, it says, "starting with the publisher, chief executive officer and executive editor, must do more to lead by example." The council does not advocate a quota system, but recommends that all hires be vetted by the recruiting committee with an eye to diversity concerns. Other proposals include creating the position of senior vice president for diversity, increasing bonuses tied to diversity improvement, and developing a mentoring and career-development program.

The council also suggests that the council itself be retained, to advise the diversity VP and publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.

In response to the report, the masthead put out its own 15-page message yesterday. The brass noted the dearth of newsroom diversity, but countered that 30 percent of Times newsroom hires in 2005--26 of 85--were minorities.

In an additional written statement, issued through a spokesperson, Sulzberger said: "I am very proud of the work done by the Diversity Council. Our business environment requires that we continue to push ourselves to become more diverse because our audiences are changing. We must change along with them and systematically hire and promote from a wider segment of the population."

--Gabriel Sherman

On Jan. 26, at the Congress Centre in Davos, Switzerland, New York Times publisher Arthur O.  read more »

The end of The New York Times’ five-week standoff with reporter Judith Miller appears to be near.  read more »

The end of The New York Times’ five-week standoff with reporter Judith Miller appears to be ne  read more »

By Tuesday, Oct.  read more »

By Tuesday, Oct.  read more »

Judith Miller came in from Sag Harbor to meet with New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at 11:30 this morning, according to newsroom chatter on West 43rd Street. Miller, reached on the phone this afternoon, said she was in New York and in a meeting and could not talk. In a later voice mail, Miller added that she would not discuss her specific whereabouts. A Times spokesperson declined to comment. --Gabriel Sherman  read more »

This week in the Observer:

Norman Pearlstine and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. take their separate high roads--both of which, for their reporters, lead up the river.  read more »

The Other Other Guy Who Knew About Deep Throat speaks!

Special two-week edition of the New York Times Pundit Standings

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