Sulzberger, Arthur Ochs

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, byname Punch, (born February 5, 1926, New York City, New York, U.S.—died September 29, 2012, Southampton, New York), American newspaper publisher who led The New York Times through an era in which many innovations in production and editorial management were introduced.

Sulzberger was educated at private schools and, after service in the U.S. Marine Corps (1944–46) during World War II, at Columbia University, where he earned a B.A. degree in English and history in 1951. A grandson of Adolph S. Ochs (1858–1935), who made The New York Times a successful paper after acquiring it in 1896, and the son of Arthur Hays Sulzberger (1891–1968), publisher of the Times from 1935 to 1961, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger became president and publisher of the Times in 1963 at the age of 37. He had spent a dozen years in preparation for that responsibility. In 1952 he worked for the Times as a cub reporter. After a year he went to The Milwaukee Journal, where he worked as a reporter and on the state and local news desks. He returned to the Times for experience on its foreign desk and as a London correspondent. He also worked in the Paris and Rome bureaus. In 1955 he came home as assistant to the publisher and then became assistant treasurer. In 1963 Sulzberger’s brother-in-law, Orvil E. Dryfoos, who had been publisher for several years, died, and young Sulzberger succeeded him.

While at the helm, Sulzberger championed freedom of speech and of the press. He also turned the once financially struggling regional publication into one of the world’s most-respected newspapers—during his tenure as publisher, the Times won 31 Pulitzer Prizes—while also modernizing and streamlining its organization. In 1964 he combined the daily Times and the Sunday edition, which had been separate, and he later broadened the paper’s editorial scope in such areas as religion, science, and women’s news. Sulzberger’s decision in 1971 to publish the top-secret Pentagon Papers, which divulged classified information about the Vietnam War, led to a court battle, which was won by the Times.

Sulzberger remained publisher of The New York Times until 1992, when his son Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., succeeded him; he remained chairman of the New York Times Company until 1997. In 2005 Sulzberger received the Newspaper Association of America’s Katharine Graham Lifetime Achievement Award.