Arthur O. Sulzberger, nicknamed Punch, a legendary New York Times publisher has died in his South Hampton home at the age of 86. While he held this celebrated position the New York Times won 31 Pulitzer Prizes, won a very famous libel case regarding protection of the press, and published the infamous Pentagon Papers.
Steph B
NEW YORK — Former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who led the newspaper to new levels of influence and profit while standing up for press freedom and editorial independence during some of the most significant moments in 20th-century journalism, died Saturday. He was 86.
Sulzberger, who went by the nickname “Punch” and served with the Marine Corps before joining the Times staff, first as a reporter, and then following his father and grandfather as publisher, died at his home in Southampton, N.Y., after a long illness, his family announced.
During his three-decade tenure, the newspaper won 31 Pulitzer prizes, published the Pentagon Papers and won a libel case victory in New York Times vs. Sullivan that established important First Amendment protections for the press.
“Punch, the old Marine captain who never backed down from a fight, was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the press,” his son, and current Times publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., said in a statement. He said his father’s refusal to back down in the paper’s free-speech battles “helped to expand access to critical information and to prevent government censorship and intimidation.”
In an era of declining newspaper readership, the Times’ weekday circulation climbed from 714,000 when Sulzberger became publisher in 1963 to 1.1 million upon his retirement as publisher in 1992. Over the same period, the annual revenues of the Times’ corporate parent rose from $100 million to $1.7 billion.
“Above all, he took the quality of the product up to an entirely new level,” the late Katharine Graham, chairwoman of The Washington Post Co., said at the time Sulzberger relinquished the publisher’s title.
Sulzberger was the only grandson of Adolph S. Ochs (pronounced ox), the son of Bavarian immigrants who took over the Times in 1896 and built it into the nation’s most influential newspaper.
The family retains control to this day, holding a special class of shares that give them more powerful voting rights than other stockholders.
Power was thrust on Sulzberger at the age of 37 after the sudden death of his brother-in-law in 1963. He had been in the Times executive suite for eight years in a role he later described as “vice president in charge of nothing.”
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