SULZBERGER NAMED E&P PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR

By: Tony Case NY Times Leader Has Proven He's More Than a Famous Name


Monday, April 10, 2000, started as a triumphant day for Arthur
Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The New York Times. That
morning, the man who directs America's most respected newspaper, scion
of one of the country's fabled publishing families, watched with great
satisfaction as ABC's Good Morning America inaugurated a regular
segment, co-produced by the Times and ABC News, on health,
technology and other topics.



Part of a broader alliance between the paper and the network that
includes joint coverage of this year's political campaigns, the
partnership was only the latest in a slew of news, marketing,
production and distribution pacts Sulzberger had sealed recently in an
aggressive push to expand the Times' name and influence - not
only in the core New York market, but across the nation and even the
world. The ABC deal would serve to expose millions of Americans to the
Times brand every day through shows such as GMA and 20/20, and
also via daily Webcasts.



In an ever-competitive media environment, attracting new audiences -
using whatever means exist - is the cornerstone of Sulzberger's
current, 10-year strategic plan for the Times, unveiled two
years ago. 'It's no longer print on paper that's critical to our
success; it's the quality of the audience we have, and how we grow that
audience, regardless of how we reach them, whether it be the Internet,
on television, on paper, with books...,' a beaming, energetic
Sulzberger said in an interview in his expansive suite of offices in
the Times' midtown Manhattan headquarters, repeating what's
become a familiar refrain among newspaper publishers looking to expand
beyond the domain of ink on paper. With marriages such as the ABC
union, the visionary Sulzberger has taken the concepts of 'multimedia
synergy' and 'strategic partnership' to unrivaled heights in the
newspaper business, linking with companies such as Knight Ridder,
Random House, Scholastic and the Denver Post.



On the day of the GMA broadcast, Sulzberger had another reason
to smile. The New York Times Co., of which he is chairman, was gearing
up to report record first-quarter profits of $83 million, a staggering
35 percent jump from the previous year. Driving that wealth was the
flagship Times, which achieved 20 percent advertising revenue
growth during the quarter, largely due to national and help-wanted
business going gangbusters. (The good times continued into the second
quarter. On April 19, the Times published its largest-ever
weekday edition, with 174 pages overall, 113 of them ad pages.) It
would have been hard to imagine such prosperity when 'young Arthur'-as
he is still someTimes called, even though he's 48 years old and
has a head full of emerging gray hairs-took the publisher's reins from
his father, Arthur Ochs 'Punch' Sulzberger eight years ago, when the
newspaper business was feeling the effects of a crushing recession, and
when belt-tightening, rather than expansion, was the norm.



But for all the good news coming his way that sunny, spring day, the
publisher was about to get his bubble burst. The Times, which
has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other newspaper, would that same
afternoon, for the first time in 15 years, be denied journalism's most
coveted trophy. It's become an annual ritual for the Times to
carry home at least one Pulitzer, and often two or three awards. But
this time around, Sulzberger was forced to sit by, empty-handed, while
rivals like the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the
Los Angeles Times collected their prizes. Though the
Times got shut out, the Post and Journal garnered
multiple Pulitzers this year. An affable Sulzberger - in typical
fashion, bouncing around his office that afternoon, full of spit and
vinegar - shrugged off the loss.



'When Joe DiMaggio swung and missed, he was still Joe DiMaggio,' he
offered. 'It was an unbelievable run.'



An unbelievable stewardship



The same could be said of Sulzberger's relatively short but eventful
stewardship of the paper his great-grandfather, Adolph Ochs, bought
more than a century ago. This magazine's decision to choose Arthur Jr.
as Publisher of the Year, upon examining what all the exec has
accomplished, seems an obvious one. But it would have been hard to
imagine his being the publisher of the Times - let alone such a
successful one - just a few years ago, even though he is said to have
wanted the job since he was a boy. In fact, Sulzberger stands in stark
contrast from his buttoned-down, old-fashioned, no-nonsense father and
his forebears - generational differences plainly reflected in the
Times under Arthur Jr.



Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones, authors of the definitive Sulzberger
family biography, The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind
the New York Times, described 'Punch' Sulzberger as 'a quiet, self-

effacing leader with an abiding respect for the paper's traditions and
with an aversion to conflict,' while 'his son was confrontational and
brash, a young man who relished his self-image as a child of the
sixties.' In his book Behind the Times: Inside the New New York
Times, Edwin Diamond offered that the young Sulzberger 'was a man
of his generation. He wore his hair long as an undergraduate at Tufts
and owned a black leather jacket and a motorcycle.' He also reportedly
put his schoolwork on the backburner more often than not, experimented
some with drugs and participated in anti-war demonstrations, for which
he was arrested more than once - hardly resume material for a would-be
press baron.



Eventually he would cut the shaggy hair, settle down and marry Gail
Gregg, whom he met in 1973 while visiting his mother in Kansas, where
she lived with her third husband. Although from a broken home himself,
Sulzberger is said to have been quite the modern, hands-on father,
helping to raise two college-age children with his wife, an artist and
former reporter with United Press International.



Although he's a serious newspaperman today, the still-somewhat-bushy-

headed Sulzberger hasn't completely lost touch with his rebellious
nature, counting among weekend pastimes rock-climbing and motorcycling.
'He's got a real sense of adventure,' said Sulzberger's friend and 'gym
buddy' Bob Iger, president/COO of the Walt Disney Co. (When Iger, who
works on the West Coast, is in New York, he and Sulzberger share a pre-

dawn exercise regimen at Manhattan's Reebok athletic complex. The two
met there some five years ago, when Iger headed up Capital Cities/ABC,
which would become part of Disney.)



Perhaps that sense of adventure has led Sulzberger to so boldly take
the once-staid newspaper of record into the new millennium. Under
Sulzberger, the paper once known as the Gray Lady successfully
converted to a four-color, six-section format and introduced a score of
innovative editorial elements, including modern-day sections such as
the Internet-focused Circuits. The Times has aggressively grown
newsstand and home-delivery sales nationwide through a vast satellite
printing operation and multiple distribution partnerships with local
publishers from Phoenix to Tuscaloosa, creating a truly national
newspaper. The paper also has rapidly expanded its already-considerable
advertising base, with burgeoning categories like dot-com, financial
and entertainment helping make the paper fat. Meanwhile, the publisher
has created a more diverse work force at the once helplessly
homogeneous Times, instituting a number of programs aimed at
hiring and retaining minority talent.



On the circulation front, the Times is enjoying gains both
nationally and in the metro New York area, even though it raised its
local newsstand price to 75 cents from 60 cents last fall, and even as
newspaper sales industry-wide have declined in recent years. During the
six months ended March 31, the Times built on the gains of past
years, its weekday sales rising 1.3 percent to 1,149,576 copies and
Sunday circ growing by a little more than 3,000 copies to 1,691,287.



One factor helping the paper to push more copies: a massive, multi-

market ad blitz, utilizing print, outdoor, broadcast, direct mail and,
yes, cross-media partnerships. Newspapers are hardly known for opening
up the coffers for promotion, even as they strong-arm their ad clients
into doing so. Indeed, rare is the newspaper that puts as much emphasis
on advertising as the Times. Last month, the paper unveiled the
latest phase of its $20 million 'Expect the World' campaign (created by
Bozell New York), rolling out TV spots featuring the poet Maya Angelou.



And while practically every newspaper now touts a presence on the Web,
the Times has made perhaps the boldest leap into that arena.
Last February, it became the first newspaper company to take public its
Internet unit, New York Times Digital, which encompasses NYTimes.com,
Boston.com (the Web site of the Times Co.'s Boston Globe) and
Abuzz. 'I think it's an indication of what's to come in newspaperland,'
Peter Appert, media analyst with Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, said at the
time of the IPO. 'The others will be watching closely.'



What may be most remarkable about the Times' dramatic expansion
is that through all the changes, the paper's editorial integrity has
remained unmolested. 'Our readers are looking at the paper and thinking
it's as good as it's ever been, and I know our journalists are feeling
that way,' Sulzberger said. 'It's a good time.'


Sulzberger, while encouraging more communication between the newsroom
and other departments of the paper, has taken pains to ensure editorial
autonomy and the strength of the reporting franchise. For that reason,
the Times is not likely to see a fiasco akin to what the Los
Angeles Times experienced recently, after it was revealed that its
publisher had made a secret, ethically murky profit-sharing pact with
the advertiser of an editorial section. At his own paper, bringing
together all factions has been 'critical to our success,' Sulzberger
insisted. Unlike his colleagues on the West Coast, though, Sulzberger
wants to put a door in the holy wall separating the news folks from the
business departments - rather than tear down the wall. 'You cannot
impose the values of one side on the other,' he stated flatly.



Most would agree that Sulzberger has been able to so successfully
revamp the Times at all levels because, through deep, hands-on
experience, he gained an intimate understanding of how every part of
the paper functions - including the often-conflicting news and
advertising factions. In 1978, after working as a reporter for the
Raleigh (N.C.) Times and the Associated Press, Sulzberger
went to work for the Times, and in the years to follow held
various jobs throughout the paper, including a stint as a classified
advertising clerk. 'Upon joining The New York Times, he set
about learning about every aspect of the paper in a concrete way,'
recalled Times editorial page editor Howell Raines, who first
met Sulzberger 20 years ago, when both were Washington reporters.



Industry movers and shakers who have watched Sulzberger guide the
mother ship of American journalism for nearly a decade concur that the
publisher is a visionary who has pulled off nothing short of a
revolution in those hallowed walls. 'Arthur has a willingness to
respect tradition - and, in effect, honor the past - without letting
that reverence for the past get in the way of successfully moving the
business into the future,' said Disney's Iger. 'Often habit and respect
can be crutches as they relate to the necessary process of adapting to
a new age.'



'Arthur's brilliant; there's no other way to say it,' offered MediaNews
Group president/CEO William Dean Singleton, who, in 1993, along with
Sulzberger, joined the board of the newspaper industry's largest trade
group, the Newspaper Association of America. 'Arthur understands the
future. Editorially, the Times has made great strides under his
leadership. He took a great newspaper and made it even greater. His
strategy to go national has proved brilliant. It's just an outstanding
company, and you have to give most of the credit to Arthur because he's
leading it.'



'Arthur is a five-star publisher, and he always has been,' added
Washington Post publisher Donald Graham. Recalling Sulzberger's
stint in the Times' Washington bureau, Graham said, 'It's a
challenging assignment for a young reporter to take on. He had to prove
himself, and he did. He won the respect of those who don't easily give
respect.' Sulzberger 'knocked himself out learning every relevant thing
about The New York Times,' said Graham, himself the heir to a
famed publishing dynasty who worked his way up through the Post.
In fact, Sulzberger and Graham both struggled to overcome perceptions
they got where they did simply because of good, old-fashioned nepotism.



Inside the Times, some actually considered Sulzberger's pedigree
a plus. 'I don't think the name has worked against him,' said Raines.
'At the Times, there's such a strong tradition of family
involvement, and professionals here see that as essential to
maintaining what the Times is. In Arthur's case individually, he
so quickly demonstrated his competence that to whatever degree [his
family name] might have been an entry-level issue, that disappeared
many years ago.'



Advertising pedestal



Many in the advertising community are also putting the Times on
a pedestal these days. 'I certainly have seen a terrific revitalization
of the New York Times,' said Sean Cunningham, executive vp/media
director at Lowe Lintas & Partners, New York. 'The ability to keep what
the Times did best - and that, to me, is really world-class,
second-to-none, serious journalism as its core - yet to expand what it
offers to readers and to provide greater platforms to advertisers has
been admirable.'



Cunningham noted that under Sulzberger, the Times has made a
real effort to become a problem-solver for advertisers, rather than
just an order-taker. 'A decade or so ago, when we would challenge our
[media] partners on behalf of our clients for innovative ways of
helping to change consumer perceptions, we wouldn't think to call the
New York Times,' Cunningham explained. 'I would say they've
certainly earned the right to be one of the first few calls now.'



'After years of being 'The Times,' I think the Times
realized that the Times had changed, meaning what people were
needing from newspapers had changed,' said Roberta Garfinkle, senior
vp/print media director at McCann-Erickson. 'They worked to answer
advertiser and reader needs, and it appears to be paying off.'



Sulzberger has also put more human concerns at the fore - changing not
only the face of the Times, but the faces inside the paper.
Making the work force more representative of the population has always
been one of his top goals. 'He's forceful in making sure we look at
diversity in our hiring and promotion practices, to create the kind of
work force we can all be proud of,' said Times president/general
manager Janet Robinson. Adds Times associate managing editor
William E. Schmidt: 'Arthur has been at the forefront of diversity.
This is a very important issue to him.'



Through such programs as a recruiting committee headed by deputy
managing editor Gerald Boyd and workshop and scholarship programs, the
Times last year was able to boast of a minority population in
the newsroom of 15.6 percent, up from 13.7 percent five years earlier
and comfortably ahead of the industry's 11.5 percent average, according
to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. 'Like any well-working
organism, [the Times] was comfortable with what it did,'
Sulzberger said. 'It had great values, and still does I think, and
those values are important. What we have to learn is, we can continue
to adhere to the values while changing the systems below it. You're
going to upset the apple cart a little bit. I saw it as an inevitable
thing.'



Also inevitable were the various internal conflicts Sulzberger would
have to face. In their recent Sulzberger family bio, Tifft and Jones
painted the Times as 'notorious for its backbiting and petty
rivalries.' And Sulzberger has had to contend with some major, at times
ugly, personnel matters at the Times and its parent company: A
recent age-bias suit brought by nine employees of the paper's
circulation department, which a federal judge threw out in March. The
departure of various personalities at odds with the man in charge -
Times Co. president/COO Lance R. Primis, Times columnist and
former executive editor A.M. 'Abe' Rosenthal, senior vp/advertising Dan
Cohen (a cousin and close friend of Arthur Jr.'s), Boston Globe
publisher Benjamin Taylor. Intermittent family squabbling - including
protests about Sulzberger's own rise to the top.



And people issues persist. In just a couple of years from now,
Sulzberger will be put upon to select a new Times executive
editor, when Joe Lelyveld reaches the paper's mandatory retirement age.
(Choosing an editor is the 'most important part of a publisher's job,'
Graham said.) Oft-mentioned front-runners for the top Times
newsroom slot are editorial page editor Raines and managing editor Bill
Keller. All the publisher will say about the eventual changing of the
guard is, 'We're in a great position here. We have real choices.
Obviously, everything's focused on Howell and Bill and rightly so.
They're two absolutely superb journalists.'



Most agree that Sulzberger has finessed any internal hurdles. Other
less-than-stellar moments at the Times have been more
conspicuous. One of the publisher's biggest, most-public gaffes right
out of the gate was the Sunday section Styles of the Times. With its
pieces on the downtown club scene, body-piercing and the latest in
bondage fashions, Sulzberger's attempt to spice up the paper was
universally ridiculed and eventually toned down, then scaled back. The
section, the publisher now admits, 'was not in keeping with the tone of
the Times. Our loyal readers objected to it, new readers didn't
flock to it, obviously. So what was the lesson? We're not going to be a
better paper by changing what we are. And when we lose our tone, even
we know it.'



Another early project that fell short of expectations was a Russian
edition, News in Review, the Times' first attempt at a
foreign-language paper. Launched with much fanfare in the spring of
1992, during Sulzberger's first few months as publisher, the paper was
quietly killed off two years later, the victim of high publishing
costs, distribution difficulties and weak advertiser support.


Although he's clawed his way to the top with the whole world watching,
Sulzberger understands by now that the occasional disappointment -
whether a flop of a section like Styles or a missed Pulitzer - is
simply part of the ride. The resilient publisher seems to not take such
defeats personally.



'If everything you do succeeds,' he said, with characteristic aplomb,
'you're not trying hard enough.'