The Kingdom and the Power (86 page)

The 11:30 meetings, unlike the 4 p.m. recitals, were vibrant with new ideas and discussions about what should be covered and how. While Reston did not think that
The Times
should abandon its role as “the paper of record,” he did want to reexamine the old definition of news, to eliminate much of the semiofficial pronouncements and announcements that
The Times
had habitually honored, and to devote that space to a more reflective appraisal of daily events. Reston had once stated in a speech about journalists: “We are not covering the news of the mind as we should; we minimize the conflict of ideas and emphasize the conflict in the streets”—now
he was in a position to change this, and hardly a day passed without
The Times
’ carrying an interview with an important man of ideas: if it was not Justice Fortas commenting on modern youth and the law, it was Ben Shahn discussing his art, or S. J. Perelman lamenting the state of humor, or Jean Monnet reflecting on economic conditions in Europe. The difference in
The Times
was not so much the attention given to such individuals as these, who had often been in the headlines before; rather it was the elaborate display that the paper was now giving to what Reston had called “the news of the mind.”

A very long interview with André Malraux, beginning on the first page of the second section, under a prominent headline and photograph, was continued in the back of the paper; in the days when the bullpen had decisive power, Bernstein would doubtless have not allowed such an interview or feature story to jump from that page (known within the office as the
second-front
) to the back, insisting instead that second-front features be cut to fit entirely on that one page and to end above the index, a policy that discouraged long interviews. And it was no longer uncommon to find interviews with, or speeches by, such distinguished men as C. P. Snow, on page one.

Reston wanted
The Times
to report what the young people of the nation were thinking and saying, and one of his first instructions was that
The Times
print excerpts from the remarks being delivered by valedictorians to various graduating classes around the nation in 1968. If the valedictorians seemed no more in agreement on the national goals or solutions than the politicians or educators, it did not matter; Reston’s point was to have “the conflict of ideas” reported as adequately as “the conflict in the streets,” and he also wished to suggest through his newspaper that there was more to America in the Sixties than mere conflict. As a result of his editorship, numbers of stories were soon to appear that described the more tranquil mood of small-town America, the hamlets of central Pennsylvania, the flatlands of the West, and within the quietude of Ohio not far from where Reston had been reared—to such places
The Times
sent reporters and photographers to portray the silent majority, to record their frustrations and hopes, to ask them which man they preferred as their next President. Most of them, like Reston, were not very enthusiastic about either Hubert H. Humphrey or Richard M. Nixon, and while they were worried about the war in Vietnam, they seemed equally concerned about the rising
prices of food, the inabilities of television repairmen, and the violence of the noisy minorities at home. They did not feel, however, that America was as bad as the press made it out to be, and much of this attitude was reechoed in Reston’s own columns, datelined “Washington,” “Prague,” “Moscow,” during the summer and winter of 1968. While America could not boast of “law and order,” this was perhaps all to the good, he suggested, for the alternatives might be totalitarianism, or the sort of suppression that the Soviet Union had just demonstrated in quelling liberal tendencies in Czechoslovakia. Reston wrote several pieces on this theme during the latter half of 1968, reminding readers that the United States, with all its flaws, was infinitely superior to lands overseas where there was “law and order” and little else.

The Nineteen-sixties might indeed prove to have been a glorious time in American history, Reston said in a speech at the University of North Carolina; Americans were not avoiding their problems, as the Soviets were, but instead were struggling with them openly—in the streets, on the campuses, in the courts—and he saw signs of great promise and hope for the new generation of Americans. Reston also found life in New York to be somewhat better than he had expected—the city was a fascinating study of daily recovery after daily turmoil, rhythmic in its discord, and he was enchanted by the everyday sights that most New Yorkers took for granted. From the windows of his skyscraper apartment near the United Nations, he and his wife were enthralled by the movement on the East River below—the endless tandem of tankers and tugs, yachts and submarines, seaplanes and freight-car floats, motorboats carrying commuters to Wall Street, Circle Line cruisers teeming with tourists, scows packed with garbage and being pursued by seagulls—it would make an excellent subject for a story, Reston told Gelb, and Gelb quickly agreed and assigned a reporter to it, and within a few days a two-thousand-word article with photographs was lavishly spread across the second-front of
The Times
, “jumping” to the back.

As energetic as Reston was, it was soon apparent that he could not both write his thrice-weekly column and have sufficient time left for all the necessary executive chores; and so in November of 1968, in accordance with Punch Sulzberger’s wishes, Reston announced the appointment of Rosenthal to the newly created position of associate managing editor, a title that placed Rosenthal over Bernstein, Salisbury, and Freedman, and invested in him full responsibility and authority for the running of the daily paper.
Clifton Daniel, continuing as the managing editor, would be available to Rosenthal for higher consultation, but Daniel would be devoting himself more to relieving Reston of administrative details and to overseeing the non-news side of the daily operation. Daniel would also replace Lester Markel as the moderator of the National Educational Television network’s news show; Markel, who would be seventy-five in January of 1969, was scheduled to retire from
The Times
and take charge of a project for the Twentieth Century Fund on the relationship between public opinion and public policy. And so, at forty-six, Rosenthal would be serving essentially as an untitled managing editor. He was answerable to Reston, and Daniel would not impose his will over Rosenthal’s news judgment; Rosenthal would also be in a position of authority in the bullpen. When Theodore Bernstein had cited Rosenthal as a potential executive in 1962, and had prompted Catledge to make him the New York editor, Bernstein had no idea that Rosenthal’s rise would be so rapid, would within six years put Rosenthal in a position to overrule the paper’s renowned rule maker, Bernstein himself. But as Reston suggested in his statement while promoting Rosenthal in 1968, the moment had come “to bring along to the executive structure of
The Times
a new generation.”

At the same time Reston achieved, as only Reston could achieve, a smooth transferal of Wicker from the Washington bureau leadership to the position of associate editor. Wicker, forty-two, would now have his name printed each day on
The Times
’ masthead on the editorial page, as would Rosenthal, but he would devote himself primarily to the writing of his column. Wicker would be replaced by Max Frankel, thirty-eight, although Frankel’s bureau would be an adjunct of the New York office—the autonomous grandeur that had been created by Krock was now a thing of the past, if Krock himself was not. Remarkably, the eighty-one-year-old Arthur Krock was still a resilient fixture in the bureau; and he had just published a best-selling book,
Memoirs
, that contained, characteristically, a few barbs for the New York office. Krock charged
The Times
with “over-organization,” a lack of patriarchal spirit, and excessive power and wealth, among other things, but the executives at
The Times
accepted the criticism as graciously as they could. They were reluctant to argue with Krock, having learned from experience that they probably could not win, and they also were now hopeful that the old differences would subside and a new era of understanding would begin. It had been a tumultuous year, 1968, but now it was
over, endigng on a final note of sadness that brought them together.

On the snowy, freezing Sunday afternoon of December 15, they gathered within a very large, ornate temple to mourn the death of Arthur Hays Sulzberger. He had died peacefully in his sleep three days before, at seventy-seven, living as long as Ochs. The memorial service for the chairman of the board, held at Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue and Sixty-fifth Street, was attended by many of the nation’s political and business leaders, and cables of condolences had been received from every part of the world. Among the more than one thousand mourners in the temple were New York’s Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, Mayor John V. Lindsay, Senator Jacob K. Javits, and also President-Elect Richard M. Nixon. The appearance of Nixon had been something of a surprise to most
Times
men in attendance, for the paper had not supported him for the Presidency and it had also recently become involved in a grudging dispute with him because of his running mate, Spiro T. Agnew. One month before the election, a
Times
editorial described Agnew as “utterly inadequate,” and three weeks later John Oakes printed another editorial that dredged up old charges of conflict of interest that had been brought against Agnew prior to his election as the governor of Maryland in 1966. These charges, among others, had centered on Agnew’s involvement in certain land-buying ventures and his affiliation with a bank that did business with the state; while they had made headlines, they had failed to establish evidence of illegality on Agnew’s part, or even impropriety, and in 1966
The Times
had endorsed Agnew in his gubernatorial race. But two years later, in an editorial urging the support of the Hubert Humphrey-Edmund Muskie Democratic ticket in the Presidential election,
The Times
reintroduced the old allegations about Agnew, concluding that “Mr. Agnew has demonstrated that he is not fit to stand one step away from the Presidency.”

Nixon was incensed. In a CBS television interview, he cited it as “the lowest kind of gutter politics that a great newspaper could possibly engage in,” adding, “A retraction will be demanded at
The Times
legally tomorrow.” But John Oakes, instead of retracting it, reprinted the offensive editorial, thus generating a series of charges and countercharges between the newspaper and the Agnew campaign workers and lawyers. Agnew even took out a full-page ad in
The Times
to proclaim his innocence and to assert that the paper had made errors of fact yet refused to admit them; the headline of Agnew’s ad read: “The truth hurts at Times.”

But with Nixon’s appearance at the Sulzberger service, it was obvious that the next President of the United States did not wish to continue his dispute with
The Times
, which had, after Nixon’s election, immediately begun to build its bridges back to the White House. Oakes had published editorials complimenting Nixon on his selection of Professor Henry A. Kissinger of Harvard as a Presidential assistant for national security, and Dr. Lee A. DuBridge as an adviser on science; and the announcement of Nixon’s cabinet–together with the appointment of Daniel Patrick Moynihan to head the Council on Urban Affairs—was also greeted with enthusiasm in
The Times
—as Nixon himself was greeted when he walked into Temple Emanu-El with his Secret Service men to pay his respects to the Sulzberger family.

Turner Catledge shook Nixon’s hand at the door, and with an arm over the President-Elect’s shoulder, he escorted him up the aisle to a seat in the front not far from where the family was assembled—Iphigene Sulzberger, her son and her three daughters; members of the Adler branch, the Oakeses, and close family friends. In the pews to the right were such leaders as Bruce A. Gimbel, president of Gimbel Brothers, Inc.; Robert W. Sarnoff, president of the Radio Corporation of America; Eugene R. Black, Robert Moses, General Edward S. Greenbaum; David Rockefeller, Laurance S. Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller 3d. The top men of
The Times
were there: Harding Bancroft and Andrew Fisher, Ivan Veit and Francis Cox; Clifton Daniel and Harrison Salisbury, Theodore Bernstein and Lester Markel and Daniel Schwarz. Among the many former
Times
men in the congregation were Brooks Atkinson, Charles Merz, and Bosley Crowther; and seated near A. M. Rosenthal was an individual who had worked briefly for
The Times
—James Greenfield.

Greenfield was now a news executive with the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, having done very well since leaving
The Times
less than a year ago. He had also maintained close ties with many
Times
men, including Punch Sulzberger, with whom he planned to spend New Year’s Eve. He had also visited with Tom Wicker in Washington shortly after the incident of last February, and there were no hard feelings between them. In October, with the announcement of Jacqueline Kennedy’s plans to marry Aristotle Onassis, Greenfield suddenly received numbers of calls from newspapers and networks seeking help in reaching Kennedy sources, most of whom Greenfield knew personally; among the callers was
the Washington bureau of
The Times
, and Greenfield helped in every way that he could.

The service for Arthur Hays Sulzberger was a simple one, in accordance with the instructions that he had written five years ago for this occasion. He wanted no flowers, no elegant casket, no extravagant display of mourning—and no Mozart, a composer whose music offended Sulzberger’s otherwise tolerant spirit. The service began with the singing of Schubert’s musical arrangement of the Twenty-third Psalm, “The Lord Is My Shepherd.” Then after Rabbi Nathan A. Perilman had recited three psalms, and after the choir had again sung, James Reston appeared in the bright light of the altar and climbed the pulpit that had been donated to the temple many years ago by Adolph Ochs. Reston was to deliver the eulogy, as he had done in 1963 for Dryfoos, and though his voice was solemn it seemed to convey a sense of history and continuity as it echoed through the towering heights of the great hall.