THE KINGDOM AND THE CABBAGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000300160034-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 22, 2004
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: August 15, 1977
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

The
Kingdom
And the
Cabbage
What's newer than
news at the
New York Times
Suddenly, vegetables are "in." Chefs
in fashionable restaurants across the coun-
try and cooks at home are featuring glow-
ingly fresh vegetables cooked to firm but
tender brightness ...
-New York Times, June 22
T he trip from tawdry Times Square
to the tidy Upper East Side of
Manhattan takes only about. ten
minutes in light traffic. Toward l l
most nights, a driver in a blue and white
van plies that route, delivering into the
arms of a uniformed doorman a single,
pristine early City edition of tomorrow's
New York Times-still warm from the
presses, still faintly redolent of ink and
hot lead. The newborn newspaper is
quickly whisked to an upper floor, where
a horrible fate awaits it.
When he is in town, Arthur Ochs
("Punch") Sulzberger, 51, publisher of the
Times, chairman and president of its par-
ent company, usually takes the news lying
down. On an orthopedic mattress, the ha-
zel-eyed, faintly balding, perpetually smil-
ing publisher literally tears into his cus-
tom-delivered Times.
First the front page, of course. Then
Sulzberger turns to the obituaries ("Su-
per! I'm not here today, ha ha!") and on
to the financial tables ("Super! Our stock's
up!"). Now backward toward the front
page again, ripping out headlines, para-
graphs and whole stories that either please
or peeve him, depositing the clippings on
his night table for future action. Exhaust-
ed, Punch the Ripper flings the eviscer-
300u c4or. And as the clock
Arthur 0. Sulzberger and his father's portrait
"The old man had this scenario.. . "
 prove ForRelease 2004/10128-: C1A=RDP8$--O1314R0003001-600-34-8-
Growing with Kris and Rita
Happiness's a marriage on the road
B ack stage at tl Universal Amphithe-
atre in Los Angles, the Kris and Rita
show was already if% progress. Bursting
out of his dressing rook, he knocked anx-
iously on her door. "What should I do
with al: this fruit?" Gla*ging at the gift
basket, she replied, "We'll take it home
to the kids." He nodded ha`pily and left.
A moment later, he knocked again.
"What time is it?" She told l Am. A third.
knock. "Why is the phone in?Iy room
ringing"' At that, Rita rolled her'yes and
smiled sweetly: Kris Kristoffersoni s one
superstar you take exactly as he is`' ven
if you are a newly emerged supet~ar
named Rita Coolidge and are married'V
him. ``4;
Throughout their four-year marriage,'
Kris and Rita have led a not-so-private s
life that would have a soap scenarist suds-
ing wit 't envy. Can Kris deal with his
drinking? Can Rita deal with his drink-
ing? Can sheaccept his fame as a song-
writer, singer and movie actor? Is she fu-
rious because he restaged some torrid love
scenes from the film The Sailor Who Fell
from Grace with the Sea with Actress Sar-
ah Miles for a Playboy photographer?
What's this? Rita has a hit album and a
smash single, Higher and Higher. What
will her success do to his ego? Last week
everybody in the pop world was tuning in
to find out as Kris and Rita took to the
road fo:- a two-month, 23-concert joint
tour of the U.S.
No problems. Once out there in the
spotlight, Kris and Rita behaved like a
couple of newlyweds having an easy,
relaxed time with their friends. That
was essentially the case. A year ago,
when he last played Los Angeles, he
was drip king and down enough to be thor-
oughly believable as he sang his own
Help Me Make It Through the Night.
Now, sober as a choirboy (he has been
on the wagon since last September), he
her voice of amber and honey. The
and brallos.
Kristofferson, who is 41 an
as world weary and is more e
ious times been a short-story
ball player, bartender, janj
na College and went
titled to
or, helicopter
he dabbled in po/myt 0PedVed )Rjp lldsb 3004 /ek($t2&QveIA9RDP68 0131AWQQ3 61160134t4e1
like The Silver-Tongued Devil, Sunday
Mornin' Comin' Down and Me and Bob-
by McGee.
The songs moved easily over a vari-
ety of country rhythms. The words could
be both bittersweet and low on the sub-
jects of loneliness and love: "And there's
nothin' short of dyin'/ Half as lonesome
as a sound ' On the sleeping city side-
walk;,/ Sunday mornin' comin' down.
And blunt about sex: "There ain't noth-
ing sweeter than naked emotions/ So you
Rita C olldge and Kris Kristo rson at Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles
yours, hon, and I'll ijow you
quickly as a performer. Lean and beard-
ed, he radiated both a searing sexuality
and a boyish vulnerability. That combi-
nation was translated into a fast rise in
movies. His first, Cisco Pike (1971), about
a pop idol down on his luck, merely sug-
gested his film potential. Several more
-Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Blume
in Love, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
wants to "get back to the basics"-of mu-
sic, mixing with the musicians, jamming
a little and hearing other groups. The oth-
er day he liked a song on the radio, but had
not the slightest idea what it was or who
was singing it (he later learned that it was
ur with Rita as a time to rev up:
e, any groove."
Kris is grooving on Rita's
-followed. Last year's A Star Is Born, in the marquees lil &4y to read KRIS KRIS-
which he played Barbra Streisand's ag- TOFFERSON, FEA'(R.ING RITA COO-
ing, self-destructive mentor, made Kris- LIDGE. Even though ' h has been through
tofferson a superstar. it all himself-the crov,s, the lights, the
both academe d the Army, he began July 4;. No more films are on his agenda cause Rita has a hit, it wou1Chbe crazy
drifting. At 29 he found himself in -at least for now. Like his Texas buddies not to go out now. It ih, not the time to lag
Nashville, and he began writing songs Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, he behind. It is the time to work." ^
 strikes 12, he sinks into RrmAFaro4?wh9%191(P1Z
his paper's motto has it, all the news that's fit to print.
Three nights a week, however, something keeps Sulzberger
awake. Visions of vegetables dance in his sleepless head, along
with recipes for pork chops liegeoise, treatises on termite de-
tection, shopping guides to $44 canvas bags and $1,850 "Love"
pendants from Tiffany.
If it's Wednesday, this must be Living, the Times's once-
weekly, 20-odd-page insert packed with ads and enthusiastic ar-
ticles on food, wine and related pleasures. On Thursdays Sulz-
berger's diversion is Home, a similar free-standing section
celebrating furniture, interior decoration and gardening. Fri-
days it is Weekend, a guide to entertainment and the arts in the
world's capital of culture. Sulzberger stays up late with each of
his three night visitors, savoring the recipes, shopping tips and
restaurant reviews. The Times, as a new advertising slogan
boasts, is now MORE THAN JUST THE NEWS.
Since the first of the new sections, Weekend, was launched
16 months ago, the Times's average daily circulation has moved
from 821,000 to 854,000. On days the new sections appear, as
many as 35,000 more people buy the paper than on unsup-
plemented days. Moreover, those new customers were not won
at the expense of the Times's
feature-packed Sunday edi-
tion, which has gained 11,000
new readers in the past year.
In May the Times sold more
advertising than in any pre-
vious month in the paper's
126 years, a coup Sulzberger
credits largely to his three
new offspring. Says he:
"They're super."
The new sections are not
all that's new at the New
York Times these days. Un-
der Sulzberger the Times has
redesigned its pages, reshuf-
fled its enormous staff, auto-
mated its neolithic produc-
tion processes and spun off
four new suburban editions.
Sulzberger has also injected
new life into the newspaper's
parent New York Times Co.,
which embraces nine smaller
dailies, four weeklies, six
magazines (including Us,
circ. 500,000, a four-month-
old imitator of Time Inc.'s
PEOPLE), two broadcast sta-
tions three book publishers
went Living with a weekly
section called Dying, filled
with obituaries and funeral-
parlor ads, and launch a new
insert called News. A hapless
reporter, so one routine goes,
was sent to cover a flower
show for Living, missed the
crucial unveiling of a new
strain of begonia and, as pun-
ishment, was made a foreign
correspondent.
The Times, of course, is
not just another home-town
daily, a genre that has long
understood its local service-
magazine functions. Though
pressed by the Washington
Post, the Times remains the
best newspaper in the U.S. It
is the platinum bar by which
editors across the country
measure their own papers.
Except for the heavily finan-
cial Wall Street Journal (circ.
1,465,000), the Times is the
DRAWING BY FISHER ?19]Z; THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, INC closest approximation in the
"What a night! We've got someone from 'Living' in the Tap Room, U.S. to a national newspaper.
someone from 'Weekend'in the Grill, someone from 'Home'in the Fully one-quarter of its read-
Blue Room and Mimi Sheraton on the Terrace.' ers live more than 100 miles
and part of three Canadian paper mills. Once an institution
more interested in public service than profit, the New York
Times Co. is now on Wall Street's good-buy lists. After several
years of see-saw profits (net income was $13.6 million in 1972,
$20.3 million in 1974, only $12.7 million in 1975), the firm last
month announced that earnings for the first half of 1977 rose
39%, to $12 million on record revenues of $244 million. Barring
unforeseen trouble, the house of Sulzberger is on the way to its
best year ever. *
The dawn of Living, Home and Weekend is also a sign of
new ferment throughout the newspaper business. The number
of Americans who buy a newspaper every day dropped nearly
3% between 1973 and 1975, despite population growth, before
leveling off last year at about 61 million. As a result, nervous pub-
lishers have been conducting readership studies to find out how
to restyle their papers to keep their customers happy. The read-
'The firm, which went public in 1969, is controlled through a trust by Sulz-
berger, his mother Iphigene, 84, and his three sisters: Marian, 58, who is mar-
ried to Time Inc. Chairman Andrew Heiskell; Ruth, 56, publisher of the
Chattanooga Times; and Judith, 53, a nonpracticing physician married to a re-
tired Manhattan textile executive. Together, the family owns 71.3% of Class B
stock and 36.3% of Class A stock, which has narrower voting power than Class
Et and is traded on the American Stock Exchan e.
bifs'~~9i~i3~li4k~Q681~99s, entertainment,
food, leisure and similar daily living concerns that New York
and other city magazines have elevated to objects of intense jour-
nalistic scrutiny. Says the Los Angeles Times's new president,
Tom Johnson: "People do not want a newspaper, they want a
`use' paper."
Like the New York Times, would-be use papers from the
mighty New York News (circ. 2 million, the nation's largest) 1.0
the Albuquerque Journal (circ. 75,000) are launching how-to-do-
it, where-to-get-it supplements. Papers that have had such news-
print service stations for years are allowing them more space
and promoting them more heavily.
I n a sense, newspapers are simply giving their readers what
magazines, particularly women's magazines, have been
providing for a long time. But this can be wrenching for se-
rious newspapermen, of whom there are a good many at
the Times. There some reporters and editors complain that im-
portant news is playing second artichoke to investigative re-
ports on vegetables and hot scoops on wicker furniture. News-
room cynics jest that it is difficult to get a story into the paper
without a recipe attached. Others suggest that the Times aug-
from New York City. (One such subscriber is Jimmy Carter,
who carefully combs one of the 86 copies delivered every morn-
ing to the White House.) The Times is also the nearest to a news-
paper of record in the U.S. Although it has cut down on the full
texts of speeches and documents, it still finds room for the tran-
scripts of most presidential press conferences. The Times's av-
brage "news hole," the total amount of space devoted to edito-
rial words, is not especially large (160 columns a day, v. 185 for
the Washington Star, 218 for the Chicago Tribune). But the
Times avoids wire-service copy and other canned material, and
nearly all the 152,000 words packed into a typical Times are staff-
written. And that is a lot to absorb. Says Sulzberger: "Anybody
who claims to read the entire paper every day is either the
world's fastest reader or the world's biggest liar."
The Sunday Times (circ. 1.4 million) is without quarrel
America's most dangerous newspaper-a back-wrenching, 4-
lb. 400-page package that could paper over Manhattan to a
depth of two pages. Indeed, the city once estimated that it cost
$6 million annually just to dispose of the papers as waste. Years
ago, it was reported that a small plane carrying a load of Sun-
day Timeses over a rural area in the West dropped a copy, kill-
ing an ox. The Sunday sections include a newly renovated Book
Review that has 25,000 mail subscribers of its own and is dis-
Approvedl Far-Rete se-20"4 - - 73
TIME, AUGUST 15, 1977
 --- --Approved For Release 2004/ 28 : CIA-RDP88-01314R000300160034-.9
e Press tri.buted separately in
1,000 bookstores and libraries. There is number of feat .res. including "Topics" a collection of short
also a redesigned New York Times Magazine; even though its ed- and sometimes ' nappy commentaries. Frankel (who reports di-
itorial quality at the moment is uneven and its direction un- rectly to Publisher Sulzberger) has also expanded the range of
certain, the magazine still carries more
d
ti
i
a
ver
s
ng pages than
any other American weekly except Business Week.
The Times maintains the world's largest full-time news staff
550 journalists in New York, 32 outside the U.S.. 40 in Wash-
ington and 19 more scattered around the country. The paper
spends more than $35 million a year to support them, an edi-
torial budget far larger than that of any other newspaper, in-
chiding the Washington Post ($19 million) That is not all the
Times spends: each year some 6 million trees are chopped down
in the service of completeness.
The Times still knows how to be both good and gray. The
shift from an eight-column-a-page format _o an airier six co:-
urrms has improved its fussy make-up. though often the ,.hoice j
and play of pictures leave much to be desired. Overall, the pa- i
per not only looks better, but reads better. M ich of its news wr, il.
ing is stilted, wordy and dull. But many Times feature writers
and some of its reporters write with -efreshing elan Richard
Shepard, heir to the late Meyer Berger's old daily "Aioui New
York" column; Israel Shenker, a utility feature wetter and house
punster and semanticist; John Leonard, who writes an erudite,
?-, + : + =
The Great Dill Pickle
I'he Flea Market:
A Weekend Hobby
For Fun and Profit'
Why Michei suerard
Cut the Calories
subject matter : ,td sharpened the bite of opinion on the page,
though the poin of view is sometimes difficult to track through
the vivid prose.
The Times', foreign reporting remains unrivaled among
newspapers. Tim ?sman Sydney Schanberg's files from Cambo-
dia won a Pulit. er in 1976, and James Markham's dispatches
last year from a ar-torn Beirut should have. But the Washing-
ton bureau, the fief of Arthur Krock in the 1940s and '50s, then
James Reston in '.he '50s and'60s. was overshadowed during Wa-
tergate by the Washington Post, now its chief rival on the na-
tional scene. The New York paper has recovered somewhat,
beating the Pos, to major Washington scoops abou- CIA do-
mestic spying ac.i drug experimentation on unwitting civilians.
The Post has be-n giving extravagant d 'splay to its newsbeats
on the Koreagatr scandal--in fact, to any stories with the mer-
est hint of wron, :doing. On balance, the Post probably dc,es a
more thorough , b of covering Washingl:on's politics and gov-
ern,mertt admrni- anon. but the Times still carries morn'a'eighI
on tare national ?ne.
On its home li-f _he '?;;
Gi and Hot is Pr. i ter Finds
A Style mSunset C;n 'hip Shapt
Ch,;l it-.qucSatin
r rar; Gerrmny :_...
l.ian,,h Lazne for
~',anadiar. Ballet
The rintes's three weekly inserts, which have helped boost circulation by as north ,is 35,000a;, day
ea iacuzg a paper to match just an editors values is I k r-1c o +. t it r iC. ?re ?stoe
~~shoestha:fitonlyhis4eer."
harrowingly personal Living column; Reporter Molly hies vJth Manh: ttan at the expense of th e city's four other bor-
mer co-editor of the upstart Texas Observer; and twc forme, o_.gn5.. J-istly. Alta tugh it quickly mobilized a journalistic SWAT
New Yorkers, Home Reporter Joan Kron, and Food and Rein- team h,r last month's blackout, the Times has only one full-
taurani Critic Mimi Sheraton, who sometimes shares the Tix?tes time reporter stat7ned in all of Queens (pop. 2 million) and
ninth-Poor test kitchen with Veteran Epicure Craig Claiborne none n The Bronx ; pop. 1.4 millionl. When a ten-alarm fire con-
and writes about food with an exuberance that would be me- s'.;med all the burs sings in seven square blocks of Brooklyn five
diem rare at any paper. a s after the blac? out., the Times ran the story on page 26-
1'he: paper's 52-member cultural staff has make-c--b,-cal, A few Times ?ditors rationalize such benign neglect by
power rar beyond New York over theater, dance. music, On- . ao'ing that the largely blue-collar-and indigent no-collar-
ema and architecture. Goaded by the example of the Wt ,'l S'ree: multitudes of Broc'Jyn and The Bronx a.re not Times readers
Journal, a major and partly successful effort has been made to (a defense the par-.,r does not offer in cohering other parts of
improve the financial pages by expanding the staff and adding he world?. But 7 'ties people also claim that local coverage
regular reports on careers, management., technology and other has improved sir. Sydney Schanberg became metropolitan
subjects. The once sternly liberal and general y predictable ed- editor in May, rc_)lacing Mitchel Levita.s, who was moved
itorial page has brightened since its editor---and Sulzrerger's I sideways to edit tte Sunday Week in Review section. Scharr-
cousin--John Oakes, 64, was made a senior ecitor last January. berg straightaway told his 100 or so metropolitan reporters
The new oracle-in-chief. Max Frankel, 47, a former Washing- that he wanted r erybody "to have fur." Productivity has
ton bureau chief, has moved editorial policy a little closer to Sul:- increased among -eporters who were previously alienated,
berger's own middle- f-the-road a ti m an
74 ~ppro--e.d-fFOf elseaSe126 t' 6/28 :t> I~-I~bF'j~~-?f~113j14' 0(0 1 934egis growing more J
-_ UG
rtME. AUGUST 1 i. 1977
 Craig Claiborne in the Times's test kitchen, Living Editor Annette Grant and Home Editor Nancy Newhouse, Home Reporter Joan Kron
Visions of vegetables, recipes for pork chops hegeoise, treatises on termite detection.
aggressive. The paper last month, for example, printed the
names and pictures of prominent citizens who rent space to
sex shops.
As for complaints that the new supplements, plus the sub-
urban editions, court the suburbs at the expense of urbanites,
Times editors insist that the paper has not reduced the amount
of money, staff or space it lavishes on New York City news.
They also assert that the total space devoted to editorial matter
has actually increased slightly since the switch from eight nar-
row columns a page to six wide ones. Says Executive Editor
A.M. (Abe) Rosenthal: "Other papers have added water to the
soup, but we've added vegetables."
Some reporters, however, complain that the addition of Liv-
ing, Home and Weekend has stretched the news-gathering staff,
for all its size, somewhat thin. Others note that the sections them-
selves are rather thin, and that Editors Annette Grant of Liv-
ing, Nancy Newhouse of Home and Marvin Siegel of Weekend
are reaching rather desperately for ever more trivial articles to
fill. them (last week's Living devoted an entire page to dill pick-
les). Still, one close reader agrees that the paper is not going
soft. "People who run down the Times ought to have to com-
pete with it every day," says Michael O'Neill, editor of the ex-
cellent rival News. "They wouldn't be so quick to criticize."
The Times has been the newspaper for competitors to reck-
on with ever since Adolph Ochs bought it in 1896, 45
years after the paper was founded by a Republican pol-
itician and a few months before it would have died of ter-
minal mismanagement. Ochs (which he pronounced ox, its
meaning in German), the Cincinnati-born son of German-Jew-
ish immigrants, had at the age of 20 acquired the flagging Chat-
tanooga Times and revived it. He set out to work a similar
miracle on Park Row, the Times's home until he moved it north
in 1904 to Longacre Square (which city fathers then renamed
Times Square). Ochs banished fiction from the newspaper and
declared that comic strips, gossip columns and other frippery
would have no place there. He introduced book reviews and a se-
rious Sunday magazine, and started printing news about the
city's growing financial community. Not just any news, but use-
ful news, like the arrival times of mail ships and the names of vis-
iting out-of-town buyers.
Ochs' chosen instrument in his quest for excellence was
Carr Van Anda, the icily intellectual managing editor who once
spotted a mathematical error in an Albert Einstein lecture that
the Times was about to print. Einstein gratefully acknowledged
the mistake. Van Anda also had an eye for circulation-building
stunts, such as the Times's sponsorship of polar expeditions by
Commodore Robert Peary and Roald Amundsen.
Together, Ochs and Van Anda made the Times a Victorian
paradigm of probity and thoroughness, emghasizingkijp1gr ,tig?
and national political reporting and eschewing titillating ac-
counts of crime and scandal. But not all crime and scandal.
When now retired Sunday Editor Lester Markel once com-
plained to Ochs about a steamy double murder the Times was re-
porting closely, the patriarch explained: "When a tabloid prints
it, that's smut. When the Times prints it, that's sociology."
Ochs died in 1935 and was succeeded by Arthur Hays Sulz-
berger, the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer who had mar-
ried Ochs' only child, Iphigene. Under Sulzberger, changes. in
the Times were subtle. He put more pictures on Page One, hired
the paper's first female foreign correspondent (Anne McCor-
mick) and quietly expanded the cultural departments. But A.
Aitchess, as Sulzberger whimsically signed the light verse he
sometimes wrote, kept the Times essentially Ochsian. In 1954
he sacked as picture editor a man who allowed the paper to pub-
lish a photograph of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio French-
kissing on their wedding day.
Sulzberger retired in 1961 and was succeeded by his son-in-
law Orvil Dryfoos, the son of a hosiery manufacturer. A hand-
some and capable Wall Street broker, Dryfoos had been draft-
ed into the paper shortly after his marriage to Sulzberger's oldest
daughter, Marian. Like Sulzberger, Dryfoos carried on the Ochs
legacy, but he faced new challenges. In 1962 he launched a sep-
arate West Coast edition, basically a condensation of the East
Coast Times, but the venture got off to a bad start. The next
year Dryfoos had to weather a 114-day strike of printing unions
that left him and the entire
staff seriously demoralized.
While Dryfoos grappled
with these problems, Arthur
Sulzberger's only son was
marking time in a succession
of minor posts in Times Co.
management. Punch Sulzber-
ger was an amiable presence
around the building, though
when he attended an occa-
sional story conference he
sometimes seemed more in-
terested in examining the air-
conditioning ducts on the
ceiling. "The old man had
this scenario," Sulzberger
says of his father. "Orvil
would go along for a while
as publisher and then I was
going to take over." But Dry-
foos died of a heart ailment
at 50 after only two years on
300%3WJthe family turned
 Approved For Release 2004/10/28 : CIA-RDP88-01314R000300160034-9
'Vantage is solving
a lot of my problems
about smoking:'
"You see, I really enjoy smokin.
T6 me, its a pleasure. But it was no pleasure hearing
all the things being said against high-tar cigarettes.
Of course, I used to kid myself a lot about
giving up the taste of my old high-tar cigarette for
one of those new low-tar brands.
But every one I tried left my taste unsatisfied.
"Then someone offered me a Vantage.
Sure I'd read about them. But t thought they were
like all the others. I was wrong.
Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined FILTER mg. "tar", 0.7 mg. nicotine, MENTHOL 11 mg."tar'
That Ci arett Smokin Is Dangerous to Your Health. 0.7 mg. r cotine, av. per cigarette, FTC Report DEC.'76;
g Approved For Release 2004/10/28: IA-RDPo fffQ1 4RO 300.1 GQQ lifl9 av. per cigarette by FTC method.
 Approved For Release 2004/10/28 : CIA-RDP88-01314R000300160034-9m,9?-A., REYNOLDS TOBACCO
Yet it had nearly half the tar:
It satisfied like my old brand.
Vantage was right.
"It's been about a year
since I started smoking
Vantage.
And it looks like I'm
going to be smoking them
for a long time to come"
Bernard Schoenfeld
Westchester, New York
Regular, Menthol,
and Vantage 100's.
Approved For Release 2004/10/28 : CIA-R - 1314R000300160034-9
 Approved For Release 2004IFFi*F ?@P88-01314R000300160034-9
to Purtch. "I was dumbfounded," says Punch. Then 37 and as-
sistant treasurer, he was also quiteunprepared to take control.
He learned fast. The Times was still reeling from the print-
ers' strike, and the papers management techniques were so re-
laxed that there had never been a budget. One of Sulzberger's
first., and gutsiest, moves was to shut down the hemorrhaging
West Coast edition. More important, he started diversifying the
Times by buying Cowles Communications, with its lucrative
magazines (Family Circle. Golf Digest) and small newspapers.
Diversification, according to Columnist James Reston, has been
Sulzberger's shrewdest move to date. "With more of the com-
pany's earnings coming from outside the paper." says Reston,
"Punch could confront the unions with the fact that we could
take a strike if necessary."
They eventualy got that bulletin- In 1974 Sulzberger ex-
tracted an agreerient from his printers to allow gradual au-
tomation in retu-i for lifetime job security for those then work-
ing. A born tinke -er, Sulzberger threw himself into the task of
replacing the Tirt.es's clacking linotypes and other antiquated
production cont'-v. ptions with computerized equipment. "You
just wouldn't beti,,:ve it," says Sulzberger of the pre-electronic
days. The comp sing-room staff used tc measure the amount
of classified ads wth a string."
Sulzberger also pensioned off whole lumberyards of exec-
utive deadwood ort the paper's 14th-floor management corridor
and hired younger men. Then he spirited his biz kids off to se-
cluded conference centers for endless sessions devoted to plan-
ning, budgeting, I ?ctures from management experts and other
The Private Life of A. Sock
ings and Presidents pay him court,
office seekers solicit his support. and
audiences of Elks and securities analysts
are eager to receive his wisdom. Yet the
man who sits at the top of one of the
world's most powerful newspapers was.
to put it gently. a late bloomer. Mild
d,rslexia inherited from his mother was
only part of his problem. "He was the
most adorable, attractive boy," says she.
He was also a lazy little bum."
When Punch was about five his fa-
ther decreed that he was too old to be
playing with his sisters' dolls, so the
boy staged an elaborate backyard bur-
iai for them. When he went to school,
young Arthur was less interested in
studying than in tinkering: with clocks.
wagons, radios, broken toys-but not
tcy soldiers or guns, which were pro-
scribed by his father in keeping with
the Times's support of gun-control leg-
islation- The elder Sulzberger liked to
bring Punch and his sisters to the of-
fice on Sundays to meet the editors. Sis-
ter Judy, closest to Punch in age and
temperament, is indirectly responsible
fcr his intriguing nickname. His father
marked the boy's b~.,rth with a verse*
about how he had arrived "to play Punch
i.c Judy's endless show."
]'he handle followed Punch through
fc ur expensive prep schools and into the
v[avines, which he joined at age 17 to
his parents' distress. But the corps gave
Sulzberger a hard edge of purpose. and
after World War II service in the Phil-
ippines, he enrolled at Columbia Col-
lege, made the dear's list his first se-
mester and graduated in 1951. After
uninspired tours as a reporter for the
"i, tamily custom that survives. Punch last year
marked a grandnephew's birth with this ditty:
zJ Nicholas Ochs put or his socks to cover
hisehubbvfeet.
tie dropped in the hamper a slightly used
Pamper and went outfora walk in the
street.
C1 Nicholas Ochs walked blocks and blocks
till his socks grew dark and dank.
When he came to a stop and sat with a
plop at the keys of the Times Data
Bunk...
Approved For Release 2004/10/28 : CIA-RDP88-01314R000300160034-%tME, AUGUST 15, 1977
Milwaukee Journal and the Times, Sulz-
berger took the first in his succession. of
management jobs at the family parr.
He also took a Times secretary as its
wife, had a son. Arthur Jr.. and a dait: ti-
ter, Karen, and was divorced in 1956.
Remarried that year to the former
Carol Fox Fuhrman (they had a dau ,h-
ter, Cynthia, in 1964, and Punch ado A-
ed his wife's daughter Cathy), Sulzber.::er
now divides off-duty hours between its
fifth Avenue apartment and a ni,,d-
ern, eleven-room cypress-and-gi,. ss
house on his mothers 300-acre estate
in suburban Stamford, Conn. Both res-
idences are furnished in what one dis-
approving family member calls "How-
ard Johnson decorator stuff." Another
upgrades it to "Bloomingdale's pleas-
ant." Sulzberger drinks vodka. on. the
rocks and eats hamburgers at his fa-
vorite restaurant, Manhattan's 21 Club
(at $9.25 a burger). He prefers to en--
tert.ain at home, however, barbecuing
steaks for Stamford visitors (mostly rel-
atives and Times .olleagues) and work-
ing wonders with vegetables. "I can't
wait for Wednesday and all the rec-
ipes in Living," says the chef. "I was
really fond of the artichoke recipes, but
as soon as we started running them, ar--
Adolph Ochs and Daughter Iphigene, Graridchildren Marian, Ruth, Judith, Arthur (1929)
"The most adorable, attractive boy ... , tlso a lazy little bum. "
 exercises that Time. ?i1 p, 4~a%%! n for?PON~ g -
itors would say, `How can we have a budget when we never
know what the news is going to be tomorrow?' "
Sulzberger's most important gift to the news side was not a
budget. It was Abe Rosenthal, who has done more to reshape
the paper than any editor since Van Anda. Canadian-born and
Bronx-bred, Abraham Michael Rosenthal joined the Times in
1944 as a $12-a-week stringer at New York's City College. He
spent nine years as a foreign correspondent and reluctantly hung
up his trench coat in 1963 to become metropolitan editor.
After Sulzberger became publisher and recognized the new
editor's relentless energy and near fanatical dedication to the
Times, Rosenthal was elevated to managing editor in 1969, ex-
ecutive editor last year. While Sulzberger was bending the pa-
per's independent advertising, circulation and other business
operations to his will, Rosenthal was pacifying the feudal out-
tichokes disappeared from the market."
For fun, the publisher reads spy
thrillers (but can never remember the ti-
tles and has found himself rereading
them by mistake), shows cowboys-and-
Indians flicks on a home projector at
Stamford Saturday nights, and generally
neglects television. He had to give up
golf because of a bad back ("Played one
hole last year and had to be carried off
in a golf cart"), but still tinkers and put-
ters, and he enjoys browsing in hard-
ware stores. Says Sister Ruth: "His idea
of a good time is coming to visit and
cleaning my car, then straightening my
house."
He keeps his desk as uncluttered as
p s s an attempting to re uce t nternecme combat that an-
imated Gay Talese's bestselling book of 1969 on the Times,
titled with only slight hyperbole The Kingdom and the Power.
In the bad old days, haughty Sunday Editor Lester Markel
reigned over a separate staff, dispatching his own reporters to
cover events alongside daily Timesmen. House Grammarian
Theodore Bernstein crusaded for correct and pithy prose, but
his powerful copydesk often took the life out of stories, or so
many reporters felt, and also exercised almost unchecked in-
fluence on how prominently pieces were displayed. Rebellious
Washington correspondents in 1968 frustrated an attempt by
the New York office to give them a bureau chief they disliked. In-
tensely jealous Times bureaus often froze out visiting reporters
when a running story brought them to town.
Under Rosenthal, Markel's old Sunday department was
merged last year with the daily staff. Rosenthal has loosened
Punch and Sister Judy, Mother Iphigene, Sisters Marian and Ruth (1972)
"His idea ofa good time is coming to visit and cleaning my car."
his sister's car, and moves through the
Times building with mild good humor.
He places many of his own calls when
he is in New York, and when Punch
travels on business, it is often in the com-
pany plane, which is piloted by a man
punningly known as Pontius Pilate. He
sometimes writes letters to the editor un-
der a pseudonym, most recently to la-
ment the departure of a brewery from
the city by encouraging the mayor to
"plant an Anheuser-Busch." He signed
the letter A. Sock ("A punch, a sock,
get it?").
Sulzberger borrowed that practice
from his mother, who at 84 still fires
an occasional witty missive to the pa-
per under the name of some long-dead
relative. Though she retired from the
Times board in 1973, Iphigene Sulz-
berger remains a formidable force in
the family. She designed its coat of
arms, which features a duck-billed pla-
typus-"an egg-laying mammal that
suckles its young," explains Punch-and
the motto NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE. Not
for her, anyway. She traveled to China
several years ago with a granddaughter
and playfully invited Chou En-lai to
write for the Times; he declined. The
matriarch rarely interferes in Arthur's
affairs. "Sons either have an Oedipus
complex about their mothers or hate
the ole gal for giving them too much
chicken soup," says she. "But then I be-
lieve in telling my children what I
think." She did protest a story about
sex at Barnard College, her alma ma-
ter. "It was an unfortunate piece of
publicity," she sighs. "I guess people
get lots of sex nowadays, but they lose
the romance."
Her son has similar views-he saw
red over a story about group sex that
he found tasteless-but rarely loses his
temper and always bubbles with en-
thusiasm for the task at hand, whether
weeding his garden or pruning his ex-
ecutive ranks. "The idea that a pub-
lisher sits up here and issues direc-
tives, wields great power and smites
people to their knees is a lot of ba-
loney," he says. "But it's a lot of fun.
It's the best job in the world."
 Part of the Times's 1.3-acre newsroom, where reporters are still sometimes summoned by loudspeaker
Diet ditors would say,,"How can we have a budget if we don't know what the news will )e tomorrow
the iron grip of the copydesk, and Theodore Bernstein went off'
to edit Times book-publishing ventures in 1969 before retiring
in 15+72. With Sulzberger's blessing, Rosentha; last November
finally subjugated the rebellious Washington bureau by install-
ing as bureau chief his own man, Hedrick ;Smith. So docile: has
the capital crew become that Managing Editor Seymour Top-
ping early this year had to gently upbraid Smith for not filing
enough protests to get better front-page display for stories. Af-
ter the journalism review More in its June issue recounted the ep-
idemic of reassignments and resignations that followed Smith's
arrival in Washington, Rosenthal spied a copy of the magazine
on a Times desk and, with mock fury, ripped it to ribbons.
`Kai Graham [Washington Post publisher] can fire two vice
presidents and nobody notices," he complained. "I try to move
a man and it inspires 15 stories, two operas and a one-act p[ay.'
In the newsroom Rosenthal, 55, has been installing his own
bane of energetic and loyal editors: Topping, 55, fellow Deputy
Managing Editor Arthur Gelb, 53, and Assistant Managing Ed-
itor.fames Greenfield, 53. A younger generation of lieutenants,
the group from which the executive editor's successor is likely
to be picked when he reaches retirement age in a decade or so,
are also resolute Rosenthal men: Hedrick Smith, 44, Sydney
Schanberg. 43, Foreign Editor Robert Semple, 41, newly named
News Editor Allan Siegal, 37, Assistant Foreign Editor Ter-
ence Smith. 38. Says one disgruntled reporter: "Its not that
Abe doesn't tolerate dissent, it's that he rarely hears any.-
n his quest for newer faces, Rosentha has also ended the
newsroom seniority system. The result of that free-form per-
sonnel policy is a brigade of generally younger. more ag-
gressive reporters woo turn out far more copy than the paper
has space for-an imbalance that creates an air of perpetua" ten-
sion in the newsroom. He rarely fires anyone; instead, slug-
gards are given little to do until they drift on, and fireballs are
favored with desirable assignments and prominent display in
the paper. Rosenthal readily admits that during his tenure the
Times has become a "less happy" place to work and one where
tens on is greater than it used to be-fun-loving Syd:tey Schan-
berg to the contrary notwithstanding. Rosenthal justifies the
I change in ambience by saying the paper cannot afford to be lei-
surely any more. "There was a time when the Times had little
competition," says he. "TV didn't exist, the newsweekties weren't
much, the Washington Post was a non-paper."
.osenthal spends much of his day with various editors in
planning the paper; much solemn thought is given to which sto-
ries should get the biggest play. He is not exactly chummy with
status was one linked closely to where he sat. Principalities
and powers wer clustered close to the news desk, with mere
dominations, thr_)nes. archangels and angels arrayed in descend-
ing order toward a far wall-even if that meant that reporters
on the same be,.!!t were barely within hailing distance of each
other. Rosentha! ended that nonsense. A major renovation of
the newsroom has begun, and plans call for carpeting. waist-
high partitions between reporters and enough fake-wood For-
mica for a coff