The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times

The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times. Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1999. 870 pp. $29.95 hbk. "Drink is the curse of the New York Herald Tribune; sex is the bane of the New York Times," is one version of a journalistic aphorism that was not quoted, but was proved for the Times, by Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones in their lengthy history of the families and executives who made the Times. Tifft and Jones, who wrote "The Patriarch: the Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty" (of Louisville), are very serious researchers on journalism. Jones, an excellent writer on the press for the Times from 1983-1992, and his wife Susan Tifft, who live in New York and share the Eugene C. Patterson Chair at Duke University, did 550 interviews and used their "unfettered access" to the Neza York Times Archives in their seven years of work on this massive book. What is significant about the Ochs and Sulzberger families is that they took the staggering paper Adolph S. Ochs bought in 1896 and turned it into a truly great newspaper without caring much about large financial reward. Longtime publisher and company head Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger was proud to call himself a "journalist," not a corporate leader, on his passport. The authors quote his son, the current publisher and Times head, as saying, "I have the Tirnes, that's my religion, that's what I believe in. " "The Times" seems the family's religion, and the rest of us are the better for it. What we need to know from Tifft and Jones is why these families, unlike so many other American journalistic families, were able to stick together and put journalistic product above personal profit. The authors are such good reporters in uncovering not only corporate machinations but also the personal and sex lives of Times families and executives that more important questions get insufficient answers from them. For all the authors' serious journalistic concern, their wealth of personal detail often gives the book a tone of lurid soap opera. After reading this account, one New York writer exclaimed, "This is a completely dysfunctional family. " Perhaps not that far gone. Many of our families might seem dysfunctional under the authors' microscope. The authors revel in the sexual escapades of Times families, without exploring whether they are common in great journalistic families. They write that the revered founder, Adolph S. Ochs, couldn't keep his hands off the ladies at the Times and elsewhere. He and his wife produced a splendid daughter, Iphigene (1882-- 1990), who was "the family's most committed liberal" as well as its main anchor for most of the century. She married Arthur Hays Sulzberger who followed her father as head of the Times from 1935-1961. A. H. Sulzberger was so flagrant that he invited his mistresses to stay with Iphigene and him at their estate. The steady Iphigene retained her courteous calm. The authors write that their son "Punch," who headed the Times from 1963 to 1992, allegedly fathered an illegitimate son with a Times employee. Later, two of his sisters urged "Punch" to have an affair when his second marriage proved unhappy. (Affairs seemed to be a suggested form of therapy in the family). The authors also delight in the sexual escapades of A. M. "Abe" Rosenthal, the controversial, opinionated editor of the Times during the 1970s and 1980s. In dealing with private lives as well as the junction of private belief and public performance, the authors are informative about how the fear of Ochs that his paper might appear "too Jewish" influenced his family's willingness to have the Times discuss both Hitler and the Holocaust as well as appointments at the paper. …