Former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who expanded the Gray Lady’s reach over his three-decade-long tenure, died yesterday after a long illness. He was 86.
His son, current Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., said his dad “never backed down from a fight” and “was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the press.”
Sulzberger — the only grandson of Adolph S. Ochs, who took over the Times in 1896 — took the paper’s reins at age 37 after the sudden death of his brother-in-law, Orvil Dryfoos, in 1963.
He broadened the paper’ s readership by introducing color pages, special sections, and a national edition.
In 1971, the Times successfully led the First Amendment fight to keep the government from suppressing publication of the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the Vietnam War.
When asked what he thought after reading the 7,000 pages of the secret reports, Sulzberger said, “Oh, I would think about 20 years to life.”
He was typically candid about the paper’s readership in a 1990 interview.
“We’re not New York’s hometown newspaper,” he told New York Magazine.
“We’re read on Park Avenue, but we don’t do well in Chinatown or the East Bronx. We have to approach journalism differently than, say, The Sarasota Herald Tribune, where you try to blanket the community.”