The Kingdom and the Power (59 page)

And yet if Reston had selected Lewis as his replacement, there were
Times
men in Washington who said they would resign. He was too coolly ambitious and driven, they believed, lacking the easy congeniality of a Reston or a Wicker. In New York, some
editors felt that Lewis, who had also specialized in covering the Justice Department, had become overly enamored of the Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, developing a friendship that was possibly a flaw in Lewis’s objectivity. Reston was aware of all this, and while he was proud of Lewis and liked him personally, he thought that Wicker would be more suitable as the head of the bureau than either Frankel or Lewis.

Anthony Lewis was deeply disappointed by Reston’s decision. And when Lewis had the opportunity to become the London bureau chief, he took it. He replaced Sydney Gruson, who was returning to New York as the foreign editor, replacing in turn Emanuel R. Freedman, who was becoming an assistant managing editor, joining Theodore Bernstein and Robert Garst. Harrison Salisbury, who had vacated his national-news editor’s job to an energetic Atlanta-born reporter named Claude Sitton, was also moving up to become an assistant managing editor under the newly appointed managing editor, Clifton Daniel.

During all this shifting, and before turning the Washington bureau over to Tom Wicker, James Reston had arranged one other detail with Punch Sulzberger that seemed very inconsequential at the time, but as events would transpire in the years ahead, it would perhaps rank as a marvelously astute move, one that would reveal something of the Restonian mind—its awareness of corporate whimsy, its knowledge of how executive wives can sometimes build the bridges that can more tightly bind their husbands. Reston, knowing that Sulzberger and his wife, Carol, would be going on a trip to Europe after the November election, planted the idea with Sulzberger of inviting Wicker and Wicker’s wife, Neva, to accompany them. This would be an ideal opportunity for Sulzberger to get to know more intimately his new bureau chief, and Sulzberger agreed. These executive trips could be disastrous, Reston knew—the constant companionship could magnify personality differences, or result in hours of boredom in the middle of the Atlantic, or there was always the chance that the wives would not get along. Or such trips could produce harmonious results, bringing a young publisher and a young journalist closer as men, ultimately producing perhaps the kind of friendship that had
begun in the Forties when Reston had taken trips with Arthur Hays Sulzberger—and it is possible that Turner Catledge would have never become managing editor in 1951 if he had not proven to be such a compatible drinking companion for Arthur Hays Sulzberger in 1944 during their Pacific junket. So the executive trip was a gamble—a source of envy to those executives who had been left at home, but perhaps a great boon to the executive who accompanied the boss: in any case, Reston thought that it was a chance worth taking, for Wicker would have to emerge as a major figure on the paper if the bureau were not to be completely swallowed up by New York. Reston was also confident that Wicker and Sulzberger would get along. They were both the same age, were both very informal, and they both were married to pretty young brunettes. Neva Wicker was a delicate and appealing North Carolina girl who knew when
not
to talk. Carol Sulzberger sensed simplicity and sincerity in people and admired it, and she had only briefly met Neva Wicker, and had barely known Tom Wicker.

So it was arranged—a month’s trip to Europe in November of 1964, just Punch and Carol Sulzberger, Tom and Neva Wicker. And, as Reston had imagined, Punch Sulzberger got along well with Wicker—and their wives got along very well.

S
eated behind his big desk in the middle of the newsroom, Rosenthal momentarily looked up from the stories that he was reading and gazed around the room at the distant rows of desks, the reporters typing, talking among themselves, sometimes looking at him in a way he suspected was hostile—
they must despise me
, he thought, being both irritated and saddened by the possibility,
they must really hate my guts
.

It was the winter of 1965. A. M. Rosenthal, who had given up his career as a foreign correspondent during the summer of 1963 to take over the local staff, had incorporated many of the changes that Catledge and Bernstein had hoped for, improving the paper no doubt; but he had also hurt in the process many older
Times
men whom he had liked personally and who had been kindly toward him when he was a cub reporter in this same room twenty years before. The changes in the Sixties were necessary, Rosenthal believed. The seniority system was outmoded, younger reporters who wrote concisely and well had to be favored over older men who could not.
The Times
could no longer afford to print long dull columns of news about municipal officialdom merely because
The Times
was the “paper of record.” The emphasis was shifting to sharper writing, faster reading, saying more in less space, saving time for readers, saving money for management—covering all the important news, but not in the stolid way that had long
been tolerated. It would be a painful adjustment for some older
Times
men who had been trained under the more leisurely pace of the past, when there had been twice as much room in the paper for local coverage, but now the economics of the business demanded tighter control over men and space. Both Catledge and Bernstein had agreed years ago that the New York staff had become tradition-bound—it was a barnacle-encrusted example of Parkinson’s Law, Bernstein had thought; an old elephant, Catledge had thought, a great big package of habit.

So Rosenthal had come to New York, and within a remarkably short time he had begun to make a name for himself as an editor. The city hospitals, whose inadequate care he had experienced firsthand as a charity patient during his boyhood, were now scrutinized by
The Times
as never before. Rosenthal directed a young investigative reporter named Martin Tolchin to explore hospital life and to write about the decrepit conditions, the substandard care given to poor patients, the general medical mismanagement—and these articles inspired legislative investigations and some reforms, and also brought journalistic honors to Tolchin and
The Times
. Rosenthal assigned other reporters to write in depth about the New York public school system—how the whites were abandoning it to the blacks; the new euphemisms of Park Avenue liberals and Queens racists; and he also sent
Times
men into the ethnic neighborhoods, including his own old neighborhood in the Bronx, to describe the atmosphere, to listen to the complaints and hopes, and to write “talk” pieces, or series of articles, about the city that had changed so radically during the years that he had been abroad. Rosenthal was now seeing New York as a foreign city, his fresh eye stimulated by sights and sounds that other New Yorkers might not notice. It seeemed to Rosenthal that homosexuals were more obvious on city streets than when he had last worked in New York, and this led to a superb article that was, by old
Times
standards, quite revolutionary. Rosenthal also assigned reporters to write about the increasing number of interracial marriages in New York, the increasing opulence of bookmakers and loan sharks, and finally to write about the remarkable case of a young woman who, screaming for help, was murdered one night in a quiet neighborhood while thirty-eight people heard her calls, and did nothing. This story, reprinted and commented upon around the nation, led Rosenthal to explore more thoroughly the subject of apathy in the city, the attitude of New Yorkers who, either through fear
of becoming physically or legally involved in a crime that they had witnessed, elected to pretend that they had not seen it. Rosenthal wrote a magazine piece in the Sunday
Times
on this subject, later expanding it into a short book, and for more than a year he featured stories that re-echoed the incident—an overwhelming public apathy interspersed occasionally by a courageous citizen who became “involved”—and this became almost a private Rosenthal campaign. The news stories that he published were not editorial in tone, but their frequent appearance in
The Times
conveyed his “message,” the need to become involved, and it emphasized more than ever that the New York coverage was changing under Rosenthal.

Rosenthal wanted to touch the nerve of New York. He wanted his staff to scratch beneath the surface and reveal something of the complexity and conflict of the city. He wanted the stories to be accurate and complete, but also interesting, and some older
Times
men, losing out to younger men who were more enthusiastic and imaginative, became resentful and helped to spread the word that the new policy was to “fake” stories and overdramatize events. When Rosenthal would assign “project” stories that would perhaps require three or four days’ research and would make greater demands on a reporter’s ability to organize the facts and weave them with transition, there was the sullen reaction from some older men that the paper was becoming a “magazine.”

Rosenthal was aware of the disenchantment in the newsroom, and he was deeply upset by it. He was, like the city he was examining, filled with conflict and complexity: he was aggressive and sentimental, driving and tender; he had been eager to shake up the staff, to break the eggs necessary for the omelet, but he had not wanted to lose the sense of popularity and affectionate welcome that he had felt years before whenever he had entered the newsroom during home leave, becoming encircled by smiling familiar faces and handshakes and calls of “Hello, Abe!” Rosenthal had then been the skinny hometown hero who had done so well overseas, an inspiration to copyboys and other young men starting up from the bottom, a source of pride to older men who recalled his early reporting days under the rigid editorship of Robert Garst.

Now things were different. The sensitivity that had contributed to Rosenthal’s greatness as a reporter was contributing to his misery as an editor. It had not deterred him from his ambitions—he
had exercised full authority, had made quick tough decisions; but inwardly he had known the effect that it was having, not only on others but on himself. One of the difficult aspects of the New York job was that he had to see the faces of those that he was demoralizing. If a once-privileged senior reporter had to be downgraded in some way, had to be removed from his regular assignment, or had to have his stories regularly rewritten or reduced in length, it was Rosenthal who had to become personally involved, sooner or later, in a face-to-face confrontation with that
Times
man. Rosenthal could not, like the foreign-news editor or the national-news editor, communicate with his reporters via cable or telephone. Not surprisingly, a few veteran
Times
men resigned during Rosenthal’s early years as an editor, and Rosenthal was partly pleased and relieved—they could not write well enough, they had lacked enthusiasm—and yet he felt remorseful, guilty, for they had served
The Times
loyally and adequately for many years.

When one younger reporter, Robert Daley, who did write well, announced his plans to quit
The Times
in 1965 and devote himself to fiction and magazine pieces, Rosenthal had been greatly disappointed. Daley was the sort who could thrive under the new system in the newsroom, Rosenthal believed, and he had liked several of the pieces that Daley had produced since returning to the local staff after years in Europe as a sports correspondent. It had often been said around the office, though never ruefully, that Robert Daley was a better sportswriter than his father, Arthur Daley, who had been on the paper since 1926 and had won a Pulitzer as
The Times
’ sports columnist. But Robert Daley possessed none of his father’s attachment to
The Times
, and he was determined to quit, believing that he could go further as a writer, and make more money, by leaving
The Times
. So he became Rosenthal’s first unwelcome defector. Rosenthal said good-bye to Daley in the newsroom, wishing him luck. Then after Daley had left, Rosenthal turned and walked into the men’s room with tears in his eyes.

An individual who was discussed and debated almost as much as Rosenthal during these years was Rosenthal’s hand-picked
assistant, a lanky creative tower of tension named Arthur Gelb. Gelb and Rosenthal were about the same age, and they had known one another intimately for years. They had corresponded regularly while Rosenthal had worked abroad and Gelb had risen from local reporting to an editorship in the Cultural-News department. On the occasion of Rosenthal’s winning the Pulitzer in 1960, Gelb wrote a humorous article in
Times Talk
about Rosenthal that the latter had not immediately appreciated. It had portrayed Rosenthal as a master of one-upmanship, a sharp-witted egotist who, upon receiving the Pulitzer, had written Gelb: “A little small, but the thought was there.” The article went on to quote another Rosenthal letter: “About Poland. I don’t know. I don’t know. The natives here are rather insolent and don’t speak English. The curry stinks but the herring is excellent. We have a nice house. Small men in small cars follow me around. We have a lovely collie named Jack or Jock or something like that. He adores me. Our cook quit. I saw Stevenson. He knew my middle initial, the test for all candidates for the presidency.”