The cult worship of the New York Times commenced not long after that day in 1896 when Adolph S. Ochs of Chattanooga, Tenn., spent a mess of borrowed money to purchase controlling ownership in the respected but failing Republican-tilting paper and appoint himself publisher. To distinguish the Times from the yellow, popular press of the day (the Journal and the World), Ochs plotted a high-brow and high-minded course for his new prize, steering clear of any partisanship. His formula elicited positive press from inside the industry, as the trade journal Fourth Estate immediately caressed the remade paper with this notice: “A glance at the New York Times since it has been in the hands of Adolph S. Ochs is like a gleam of sunlight on a cloudy day. The professional sees at once the handiwork of a fellow artist.”
Such oversize expressions for the Times have continued through the decades, reaching fullest flower perhaps once a generation or so when the old man’s heirs have drawn from their ranks a male member and installed him as publisher. With all the pomp one associates with the crowning of a king, the Times and its competitors sound the drums and blast the trumpets to mark the passing of the publisher’s scepter. When King Ochs died in 1935, the publisher’s job was bestowed on son-in-law Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who then bestowed it on his son-in-law, Orvil Dryfoos, who in 1963 surrendered it on his deathbed to Sulzberger’s son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (“Punch”). When Punch retired, the job followed the royal line to his son, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., in 1992. Naturally, the transfer of power made Page One news in the Times. -- More
