The Kingdom and the Power (57 page)

In another move to modernize
The New York Times
, to centralize its executive authority and eliminate the last of the ancient “dukedoms,” Punch Sulzberger decided that as of September, 1964, Turner Catledge would be appointed to the newly created title of “executive editor.” This title would give Catledge unquestioned authority over Lester Markel’s Sunday department, over Reston’s bureau in Washington, and over all
Times
men in the newsroom and in the bureaus around the nation and overseas. Catledge had been envisioning this arrangement for nearly twenty years. Now he had it. He would not have had it if Orvil Dryfoos had lived, or if other events had not prematurely occurred, or if Punch Sulzberger had not been a part of Catledge’s little backroom “club”—but such dialecticism was of minor significance at this point: Turner Catledge, at the age of sixty-three, slightly overweight, ailing with the gout, a large, tall, flaccid man with a round, red face, slack jaw, quick darting dark eyes that missed almost nothing, a soft and courtly manner that had long defied description, preventing most people in the newsroom from knowing exactly whether he was a corporate genius or a lucky bumbler—Catledge was now to become so eminent in
The Times
’ News department that Arthur Krock in Washington would remark with an inflated sigh: “I hesitate to breathe his name.”

Catledge would be serving as a kind of regent to young Sulzberger. Sulzberger had much to learn about the News department, and he wanted to have at his side the one man who knew it all. Catledge’s vast experience made him the obvious choice, although even Catledge could make only a highly educated guess about what was going on under him, for the department was now too large, too
spread out and mobile to be kept constantly in check even by computers. The News department consisted of almost 20 percent of
The Times
’ total employment of more than five thousand—about one thousand people who in various ways helped to write and edit the daily and Sunday editions of
The Times
. Not counting the senior editors in New York or the foreign correspondents, or the secretaries in bureaus, or the stringers, or chauffeurs; not counting
The Times
’ national correspondents around the United States and in Washington; not counting the women’s-news staff on the ninth floor of the
Times
building, or the supporting casts on other floors, but counting only the news personnel on the
third
floor, there were about two hundred staffers under the New York editor, fifty-nine under the financial-news editor, fifty-two under the sports editor, forty under the cultural-news editor, twenty-five under the picture editor.

The entire News department at home and abroad—including copyboys, clerks, copyreaders, foreign correspondents, subeditors, senior editors—would run up an annual operating bill of approximately $11 million to the Sulzberger family. The cost of publishing
The New York Times
each year—the cost of paper, ink, machinery, the delivery trucks, trains, planes, the salaries and expenses of
Times
men everywhere, and the taxes—would be more than $134 million. If the projected earnings were accurate, if there were no long strikes or unforeseen liabilities or recessions,
The Times
would realize from its advertising revenue, its circulation sale, and smaller incidentals, between $136 million and $137 million. Thus the profit from owning what is regarded as the greatest newspaper in the world would not be enormous—a bit more than $2.6 million.

To increase that profit Sulzberger did not want to jeopardize tradition or the uniqueness of
The Times
’ coverage. A
Times
editor should never give a second thought to tossing out an ad in making room for an important late-breaking story.
The Times
should continue to publish long texts of speeches that few people read, as well as such historical documents as the Warren Commission’s
Report
on the assassination of President Kennedy, which would fill forty-eight pages of a
Times
edition in September of 1964. And so Sulzberger believed that the advertising rates should go up, and so did Andrew Fisher and Ivan Veit; but the advertising manager, Monroe Green, felt differently. A rate increase might cause a decline in advertising linage, which was Green’s special source of pride, his batting average, and he was reluctant to change
the rules under which his department had dominated all other New York newspapers in advertising linage for many years. In 1964, Green’s department had recorded 67.7 million lines of advertising, bringing $100 million into
The Times
’ treasury; the
New York Herald Tribune
had printed only 18.5 million lines at lower rates, and Green saw no reason to tamper with this kind of success. Green also felt a bit uneasy about young Sulzberger. When Arthur Hays Sulzberger had been the publisher, Green’s judgment had rarely been questioned, but now Green felt changes in the wind; he felt somehow threatened by Fisher’s closeness to the new publisher. There had been rumors that Punch Sulzberger someday hoped to bring Green’s Advertising department, Veit’s Promotion-Circulation department, and Fisher’s Production department under one head, as the news divisions were about to be consolidated under Turner Catledge. It was said that Sulzberger liked the chain-of-command management style of the Marine Corps, a single line of authority from top to bottom. Whether this could work at
The New York Times
remained to be seen, although Green had little doubt that Sulzberger would attempt it. Sulzberger had already revealed his inclination with his decision to unify the daily and Sunday news staffs under one editor; and Sulzberger’s official statement, when it was finally announced on September 1, 1964, gave insight perhaps into his general approach to running
The Times
. In naming Catledge to supervise the entire news operation, the daily as well as Sunday sections, Sulzberger added: “I feel that we are recognizing the current trends in our operations and their future course.”

The elevation of Turner Catledge was reported in
The Times
on the first page of the second section, on September 2, 1964. The article was accompanied by photographs of Catledge and five other editors who would be affected by the move—Markel, Daniel, and Reston, Tom Wicker, and Daniel Schwarz. But the wordage of the article was couched in such corporate vagueness, was so lacking in the
interpretation
that
The Times
now deemed essential to modern reporting, that it is doubtful whether any outsider understood the full significance of the story. If there had been an executive reorganization in the television industry or the State
Department, or if there had been a bureaucratic shuffle in Romania, then
The Times
would have opened up its columns to clear reportage, interpretative analyses and editorials, cold facts interspersed with speculation (“According to informed sources …”); but no newspaper, including
The Times
, is very informative about its own executive maneuvers. And so there was no hint of the behind-the-scenes jockeying, the tension and despair, that had occurred within the
Times
organization during the weeks prior to Sulzberger’s public decision to end the dukedoms and to centralize the news flow under Catledge. The article in
The Times
made it seem that the principal figures were all being calmly, cheerfully moved up to greater challenges within the institution. The four-column headline over the article and photographs read: “Catledge Named Executive Editor of
Times
,” and the smaller headlines banked underneath: “Markel, Reston Raised to Associate Editors—Schwarz Sunday Chief; Daniel Managing Editor—Wicker Will Direct Washington Bureau.” And the article began, routinely: “Six major changes in editorial assignments for
The New York Times
were announced yesterday by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, publisher.”

When Lester Markel first learned of Sulzberger’s plan, he was furious. Markel was seventy years old. He had built the Sunday
Times
into an American institution, a five-pound package thick with advertising and with a circulation that was climbing slowly but steadily toward 1.5 million. Now Markel saw his whole life’s career being undermined by what he considered the negative trends of the paper—not only by Catledge’s collectivist ambitions that were being fulfilled by Sulzberger; not only by the theories and innovations of such third-floor editors as Theodore Bernstein, who had introduced the “Man in the News” profile, and other daily background features that had intruded somewhat into Markel’s former prerogatives—but Lester Markel was now equally concerned with what he sensed as a tendency to change
The New York Times
from a “good gray lady” into a swinging operation with circulation trucks boasting: “Without It, You’re Not with It.”
The Times
had achieved uniqueness, Markel believed, not from being
with it
in an ultramodern superficial sense, but rather by remaining always a
bit
above
it. This did not mean that
The Times
had failed to cover trends—Ochs’s
Times
had, in fact, led the way in covering the great scientific discoveries, the preludes to wars, the major questions and debates of every decade—but Ochs’s
Times
had not been swayed by popular fads and froth; it had remained remote, a little stodgy and stiff, a manner that Ochs had fancied. Even when
The Times
had stooped to report the great murders or scandals of the Nineteen-twenties or Thirties, it did so with a tone of Victorian restraint. As late as 1942,
The Times
was referring to Frank Costello, the racketeer, as a “sportsman.” And in the Twenties, when Markel had asked Ochs why
The Times
was devoting as much space as the
Daily News
to the scandalous Hall-Mills case—a still-unsolved murder in which Reverend Hall and his choir mistress, Mrs. Mills, were discovered slain under a crabapple tree in New Jersey—Ochs had replied: “When the
Daily News
prints it, it is sex; when
we
print it, it is sociology.”

Now, in 1964, despite his vigorous health and his even more vigorous protests, Markel was being replaced as the Sunday editor. Markel was aware of his unflattering reputation, but he had been hired by Ochs forty-one years ago to do a job, and he had done it; and he attributed much of his personal reputation to embittered writers who had failed to meet his test—and there were some who admired Markel, such as the deskman in the Sunday department who said: “The trouble with Markel is that he’s always right.” Marilyn Monroe, with whom Markel had occasionally dined—and whom he had once escorted through the
Times
building—had considered him charming and brilliant, and there were others who sensed a tenderness and great vulnerability beneath Markel’s terrorizing exterior. Markel had been absolutely shattered when he had not been invited to Brooks Atkinson’s testimonial party at Sardi’s. It had been a grand affair attended by the top names on Broadway and by every major executive on
The Times
. But Mrs. Atkinson, in reviewing the guest list in advance, had eliminated Markel from the group. This had quickly become the talk of the
Times
building, and when Orvil Dryfoos had arrived at Sardi’s, the first thing he had asked was, “Is Markel here?” When told that he was not, Dryfoos, shaking his head, had exclaimed, “Boy, I’m going to catch hell tomorrow.”

But Punch Sulzberger possessed none of the traditional timidity toward Markel. While appreciative of Markel’s enormous contributions, and respectful in his approach, Sulzberger nevertheless insisted,
in a face-to-face meeting with Markel, that Markel relinquish the Sunday editorship to Daniel Schwarz, a judicious and wellliked man who had been Markel’s assistant since 1939. Schwarz would now be answerable to Catledge. Markel would move up to the fourteenth floor as an “associate editor,” would get his name printed on the editorial page masthead each day, and would work in the newly established department of public affairs, which was concerned with “the advancement of a better-informed public.” Markel would continue to serve as the host on his educational-television news show, being regularly joined by Tom Wicker and Max Frankel, and he would also deal broadly with
The Times
’ expanding ventures in adult education, radio, and books. Of course, all the prose padding and euphemisms in the world would not belie the fact that Markel was being kicked upstairs, an event that inspired no great protest on the eighth floor. And yet in this inglorious time of his life, Markel somehow revealed a strength of character that was admirable. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, or walking out in a huff, or being destroyed with humiliation, Markel—after an initial outburst of anger—accepted the inevitable and proceeded to move up to his new office on the fourteenth floor. There he worked energetically in the months ahead, and eventually he expanded his assignment in scope and importance. Within a few years he would take on such newer responsibilities as the chairmanship of
The Times
’ “Committee of the Future,” which Markel, adapting to space-age jargon, would call “COMFUT”; this committee, whose membership included other executives and research assistants, was to ascertain what effect social changes and technological advances would have on newspapers in general, and
The Times
in particular, in the coming decades. The committee would try to perceive what human habits will prevail, how nonworking hours will be utilized in the Nineteen-seventies and Nineteen-eighties, and how
The Times
can best meet the challenges of this new scene. Some of the Markel committee’s research would be done in an office within
The Times
, while much of it would be farmed out to scientific-research organizations.

And so Markel’s energies would continue to propel, although the fragility of his ego would be shown by the fact that he rarely set foot in the Sunday department after Sulzberger had removed him. If Markel had spent time browsing through his old domain on the eighth floor, he would have passed, across the hall from
his former office, a rather formally furnished Spanish-style room with a refectory table, wooden chairs, and an iron chandelier. On the wall was a portrait of Lester Markel, unsmiling. The room, which has no important function in the department, is most often empty and very quiet. It is sometimes referred to as Markel’s “chapel.”