Behind the Times (16 page)

Punch Sulzberger was an unlikely revolutionary in any case. Neat, square-chinned, orderly, he dressed conservatively in bankers’ gray or dark blue suits, subdued shirts, quiet regimental ties, and polished black shoes. In his fifties, his hairline began retreating, drawing attention
to his high forehead and largish ears. The big head and the small body gave him an elf-like mien, a quality further enhanced by his reputation for what is known as an “impish” sense of humor. Before the new sections started, the
Times
was looking for a new title for the page it had designated for “Women’s News.” Sulzberger wrote one of his editors: “I have no objection to changing the name of Women’s News to something, but I do not think the something is ‘Living Styles.’ That really sounds cornier than anything.
Can’t we think of some other names? We could even have a contest and come up with something fancy like Edsel!” A
Times
editor, in all seriousness, advised a friend seeking a favor from Sulzberger to put his request in limerick form, “because that will get his attention.” His peers in the news business endured one of Sulzberger’s more elaborate word plays at one of the annual meetings of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, the owners’ trade and lobbying group. Presiding as the outgoing ANPA chairman, Sulzberger solemnly announced that he was passing on the gavel to the new chairman William H. Cowles III (pronounced Coles). Then he explained how much he regretted that the next ANPA meeting in 1990 would not be in Pennsylvania, “for then we could bring Cowles to Newcastle.”

Thus, the witty Punch, the publisher as he wished to be seen in the world. In an era when egocentric, publicity-hungry billionaires constantly sought to out-Trump one other, Sulzberger came across as diffident, almost anachronistic. As head of the ANPA, he was expected to contribute a five-hundred-word chairman’s letter to the readers of
presstime
, the association’s monthly magazine. For the issue of February 1989, he apologized for beginning to repeat himself after just ten months of his assignment. “As with Christmas shopping, I have delayed to the last moment and now nothing very brilliant seems to be coming out of the typewriter.” The contribution he produced was pure boilerplate, with the sleep-inducing headline, “The nation’s diversity is reflected in its newspapers.” With generous margins and ample white space, his homily managed to filled the column.

Artfully, Sulzberger made a show of his unshowiness. Every morning he came to the
Times
he produced the ID card formally required of
Times
people as they pass through the security checkpoint halfway between the revolving doors at the entrance and the elevator banks at the rear of the lobby. The guards naturally recognized him and used to try to wave him past. Gradually, they came to understand that
Sulzberger wanted to go through with the search for his billfold and the display of his ID. “
There are rules and it’s very important to me that I don’t break them,” he said when asked about the daily ritual.

This was the modest Punch, the same nice guy who helped out at the Met because he lived in the neighborhood. His sister
Ruth Golden profiled him early in his
Times
career, for the company house organ,
Times Talk.
He likes to drink Scotch, she wrote, and loves puns and gadgets, habitually arrives early for trains and planes, never remembers names and wants “his own surroundings orderly and neat.” Three decades later he still played the part of convivial fellow, coming unaccompanied to the reception room of the fourteenth-floor executive suites to meet an appointment. The puckish style didn’t always endear him to every group. In the mid-1980s, a group of professional women in New York organized a Women’s Forum to discuss major questions of the day with leading opinion makers. No market researcher could have put together a more representative group of desired
Times’
women readers. Sulzberger was invited to speak to the Forum. He began by joking, “You probably want to ask why the ink of our paper comes off on your hands”—an offhand remark intended to be amusing but having the effect of patronizing the “ladies” of the Forum. According to one of his auditors, a research professor at the City University of New York, “his comments went downhill from there.”

Within the
Times
corporate family, he could also misjudge his audience. At the
Times
1988 stockholders’ meeting held in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sulzberger presided, his reading glasses slightly askew. The questions from the audience were good ones, with a sharp curve or two thrown in. Sulzberger handled them openly for the most part; only the angle of his head, which slumped into his chest as he looked through his notes to answer the tougher comments, betrayed any annoyance.

He greeted the stockholders with a few brief announcements, delivered in head-down fashion. William Scranton was leaving the
Times
board of directors, at the age of seventy-one; the former governor of Pennsylvania was, among other things, going to use his new free time to study Latin, and “we wish him good luck and good grades.” Sulzberger introduced Scranton’s replacement, George B. Monroe, for eighteen years the CEO of the Phelps Dodge company (mining and chemicals) and after college, for a time a professional basketball player with the Boston Celtics. Sulzberger reported that 1987 had been a year of strong performance for the
Times
, with revenues 12 percent higher
than in 1986, and 1988 was expected to be a record year. In the previous twelve months too, a new weekly section for television-program listings had been introduced in the
Times
(Sulzberger neglected to mention that the
Times
was perhaps the last major newspaper in the country to recognize in this fashion the part television played in its readers’ lives). Also, the
Times’
new $450-million production plant in Edison, New Jersey, was on schedule. The plant would enable the
Times
within three years to offer color graphics and photography in its news pages—“better than the best color reproduction in
USA Today
, the standard of the industry,” Sulzberger said. More immediately, the
Times
had started publishing earlier that month a new three-section national edition. The first marketing tests of the paper, an edited compilation of news and features from the four-section New York edition, were being conducted in California, and “it looks as if it’s going to be a winner.” His words were mild enough, considering that the
Times
was investing $100 million in its latest effort to enlarge its base of readers beyond the New York area.

Then it was time for questions from the shareholders. Harry Korba, of Yonkers, rose to add to the chairman’s report. “You should know,” Korba began, “that George Monroe compiled a terrific record in the 1947–48 season for Boston.” Sulzberger beamed as Korba reeled off Monroe’s statistics, including his foul-shooting percentage. But then Korba had some questions about the
Times’
corporate aircraft and what it cost to maintain them. Sulzberger’s smile froze. The
Times
owned two planes and one helicopter, which together required $1 million a year to operate, he answered, adding: “They are not for personal use.”

Another shareholder wanted to know the amount of Sulzberger’s personal expense account. About $80,000 a year, came the short reply. A woman said that the company’s common stock was selling at 43 when the last annual meeting was held; now it was around 29¾. Her question, though, was a general one: What was Sulzberger’s reaction to the big Wall Street market crash of the past October? “I’m aghast and confused,” he answered.

Another shareholder wanted to know what the
Times
was paying for the services of its outside lawyers; he also had a follow-up question: “How many lawyers does the
Times
employ on staff?” Sulzberger rummaged for the figures: The outside lawyers’ fees were $4.6 million in 1987 and $4.8 million in 1986, while the number of in-house lawyers had risen to eleven in 1987 from nine in 1986.

A middle-aged woman pointed out that the
Times
had “no females
on its masthead” and only one female corporate executive—Katherine P. Darrow, the general counsel—“and she dates from 1980.” “We try to keep a lean staff,” said Sulzberger. The questioner persisted, noting that women need “mentors” and that “your own son was just moved up.…” Sulzberger shuffled his notes; “I assure you,” he said, “the advance of women is high on my agenda.” (Not long afterward, Carolyn Lee became an assistant managing editor, one of five AMEs in the news department at the
Times
, and Elise J. Ross was named a senior vice president, one of four on the business side of the paper.)

Another questioner, a younger woman, suggested the
Times
ought to have day care facilities for employees with young children; perhaps Mr. Sulzberger could appoint a committee to look into such an arrangement, “although 43rd Street is not the best neighborhood for children.” Sulzberger managed a patient reply: “I am leery of committees, but my colleagues and I will look into it.”

Two questions about whether the Sulzberger family was divesting itself of its stock and whether the
Times
was going to move from 43rd Street both received a short, emphatic “no.” A middle-aged man asked, “How much influence do you need to get a wedding announcement in the
Times
?” “Not much,” Sulzberger replied, “just send it to me.” The laughter that followed was quickly dissipated by a series of questions about why copies of the
Times
were no longer available in coffee shops and corner stores in Sheepshead Bay and other locations in Brooklyn. The questioners were mostly elderly men, with broad Eastern European accents. Sulzberger looked genuinely surprised, as if he didn’t know that the
Times
had in the last decade systematically scaled back its distribution in the older borough neighborhoods in favor of expanded suburban home delivery. “I’ll look into it,” he promised.

Finally, as if on cue, a stooped figure slowly got to his feet. His name was Jacob (“Jack”) Besterman and he had been with the
Times
since 1951, working in the composing room, setting advertising copy. When the new computer technology arrived, Besterman and hundreds of other typesetters agreed to a buyout of their union contracts. Besterman had completed his thirty-first year with the
Times
in 1982, but continued to draw a weekly paycheck until his seventieth birthday in 1986. “I never attended a meeting like this before,” he told Sulzberger. “I came to say that this is the greatest company in the world.” It was a sweet note on which to end the day.

But before Sulzberger could bring down his gavel, a middle-aged
woman jumped up to break the mood. She introduced herself as “Edith Siegel, stockholder, of Riverdale.” “If everything is so cozy at our company,” Edith Siegel asked, “then why isn’t our stock being recommended by the security analysts?” Sulzberger seemed genuinely surprised again. “It’s not true,” he said. “Jack Reidy of Drexel Burnham recently had good things to say about our stock.” Then he added, almost plaintively, “But it doesn’t seem to do any good.”

The
Times’
stockholders had not been overly contentious by the standards of many such company meetings. Sulzberger, however, opted for sites far from New York for the
Times’
next annual meetings. In 1989 Sulzberger convened the stockholders meeting at WNEP-TV, the
Times
-owned television station in Moosic, Pennsylvania, outside Scranton. In 1990 the traveling
Times
road company met in Duluth, Georgia, at the offices of the
Gwinnett Daily News
, the Times-owned daily in the largely white suburbs northeast of Atlanta. Ostensibly, the sites were being rotated to allow the participation of stockholders in cities where the
Times
operates outside New York. The explanation convinced no one. Away from New York, chairman Sulzberger was able to conduct annual meetings that were short and polite—tea dansants, without the discordant brass and woodwinds of Korba, Siegel, and the forsaken readers of Brooklyn. The tactic became so obvious that the
Times
decided it had to return to New York again for the 1991 meeting. (The hard times of the early 1990s, in any event, claimed the Gwinnett paper: the Sulzbergers shut it down in 1992.)

The soft-news sections were only the most visible sign of change at the
Times
during the three decades of Punch Sulzberger’s tenure. The geography of the
Times
changed. The security analysts understood that Punch Sulzberger no longer operated a New York City business; he headed a national enterprise, with a chain of newspapers in the Sunbelt states as well as a magazine group and broadcast properties. Less obviously, though the
Times
newspaper still called itself the
New York Times
, it had ceased to be a New York paper. There were no longer enough of the kind of readers the
Times
wanted to attract within the city and near suburbs. The readers of Sheepshead Bay had been written off; the paper now looked beyond to the nation across the Hudson. Walter Mattson, Sulzberger’s top business-side executive, put the situation most directly in a confidential memorandum in early 1976, when New York was still feeling the effects of the municipal fiscal
crisis, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and “white flight” out of the city. “Some of our most loyal readers are sinking their roots deeper in the suburbs as they find their jobs as well as their homes are there,” Mattson noted. “Our studies have shown that as a person’s association with the city became more remote he is less likely to be a
Times
reader.”

Subsequently, the special sections were credited with making the paper attractive to a new suburban and national audience, and thus “saving” the
Times.
In the early 1970s, the
Times
circulation and advertising revenues flattened; by the 1980s, they were both on the rise again.
“The new sections certainly
reinvigorated
the
Times
, put it that way,” Punch Sulzberger now says. “But ‘save’ it? What they did was give us a chance to practice a new kind of journalism, new for the
New York Times
anyway.” In the past, he said, the
Times
had dealt with design, furnishings, homes, food, and fashion “on the edges.” The decision “to do them in a new way and with all that space gave us a great boost, with our advertisers and readers.” The greatest boost for the
Times
, however, came as much from the paper’s physical availability as from the trumpeted editorial changes. Quite simply, the circulation department got the new paper into suburban driveways. The
Times’
campaign to increase home-delivery in the affluent counties of Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk in New York, Fairfield in Connecticut, and Bergen in New Jersey wasn’t the stuff of newsroom legend; but the paper’s business managers understood the importance of suburban subscribers. Home delivery eliminated the uncertainties of newsstand and coffee shop sales, which could vary from day to day because of an Act of God like heavy rain or scorching heat. It made the size of daily press runs predictable and avoided costly returns from news dealers. Home delivery also meant that the
Times’
advertising-sales department could go to retailers with a detailed demographic picture of
Times
subscribers. Bloomingdale’s could be reassured that its ads were reaching the desired audience. That explained why, in the late fall of 1990, when the
News
was struck by its unions, the
Times
decided
not
to increase its press run significantly or adjust its newsstand distribution routes to pick up
News’
readers. “Management didn’t want that kind of blue-collar audience for our advertisers,” a
Times
man recounted, smiling wickedly. Then he imitated an eater spitting out food: “Phoo! Not for us!”