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Words & Reflectionsated. The result was a process in whichthe fourth and fifth generations of theSulzberger family, including allspouses, formally declared that thegood of The New York Times comesbefore their ambitions and interests.Remarkably, they seem to mean this.And just as exceptionally, Punch andhis sisters have gracefully—and almostcompletely—stepped aside. Two of thethree sisters have retired from theboard, which prompted genuine pain.One sister, Marian, said giving up herboard seat was like losing a limb. Seldomhas an older generation of ownershiprelinquished so much control withso little bitterness and hard feeling. Asa result of the good will and sacrifice ofboth generations, family covenants assurethat the Times will stay inSulzberger hands for another century.What difference does it make thatthe Times remains in family hands?One short anecdote tells the tale.In 1987, the Times was riding highand business was booming. Then camethe stock market crash, which devastatedNew York, and a widespreadnewspaper recession squeezed thewhole industry. During the next fouryears, the Times lost about 40 percentof its advertising lineage—a staggeringhit. Yet, in each one of those four years,the news budget for The New YorkTimes increased. It is at moments suchas this when the family matters. Thereis almost certainly not another newspaperin the country that would havemade the judgment that the quality ofthe news was worth that burden on thebottom line. This is especially the casewhen papers are owned by corporationsfixated on short-term profit andloss. While The New York Times Companyis serious about profit, it is evenmore serious about what the familyterms “value.”Similarly, it was Punch who decidedto publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971.[See an accompanying excerpt on thisepisode from “The Trust.”] He consultedneither his own board nor thepundits of Wall Street, although whathe did put the whole company at risk.Indeed, his own lawyers refused todefend the Times when the AttorneyGeneral tried to stop publication of theclassified documents. Punch simplymade the decision he thought properand never looked back. He had thesupport that counted: that of his sistersand his mother, Iphigene OchsSulzberger, who was Adolph Ochs’sonly child. The family.It is certainly true that corporateownership has made some newspapersbetter than they were under familycontrol. But I’d gladly trade theformulaic predictability of aMcDonald’s hamburger for the hopeof something sublime at a roadsidediner, despite occasional cases of heartburn.And when the chips are down, Iwould rather trust a family with thecritical job of running a town’s newspaperthan I would a big, anonymouscorporation. Maybe decisions wouldnot be any better, but at least you’dknow whose dinner to interrupt. ■Alex S. Jones co-authored “The Trust:The Private and Powerful FamilyBehind The New York Times,” withSusan E. Tifft. They share the EugenePatterson Professorship at DukeUniversity. Jones is also Host andExecutive Editor of “Media Matters”on PBS. He is a 1982 Nieman Fellow.Punch Sulzberger’s Pentagon Papers DecisionExcerpt from “The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times,” by SusanE. Tifft and Alex S. Jones, published by Little, Brown and Company, 1999On a blustery Friday in late March1971, Neil Sheehan, a Washingtoncorrespondent for TheNew York Times, and his wife, Susan, awriter for The New Yorker, arrived inCambridge, Massachusetts, andchecked into the Treadway MotorHouse near Harvard Square, registeringas Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. Hourslater Sheehan called Bill Kovach, theTimes’ Boston bureau chief, from a payphone. “I need some help,” he said.After weeks of negotiation, Sheehanhad persuaded Daniel Ellsberg, a researcherat MIT’s Center for InternationalStudies, to let him see a topsecrethistorical study of America’sinvolvement in Vietnam. The fortyseven-volumework had been commissionedin 1967 by Secretary of DefenseRobert McNamara, who had grown increasinglydisenchanted with the warand had ordered a historical study totrace the roots of the United States’engagement. Lyndon Johnson hadknown nothing about the study, and ofthe fifteen copies distributed at thetime of its completion in 1969, onlyone went to an official in the NixonAdministration: National Security AdviserHenry Kissinger.…Twelve weeks later Punch[Sulzberger] gave the green light topublish what came to be known as thePentagon Papers, despite having beenadvised by the paper’s lawyers that theTimes might be sued and driven intofinancial ruin and that he himself mightgo to jail. The far greater worry, by hisown reckoning, was that readers mightjudge the Times to be treasonous.Punch had weighed all these factorscarefully, but once he finally made uphis mind, he became immovable. WhenLouis Loeb, the paper’s outside counsel,refused to defend the paper’s actionsin court, Punch dismissed theman who had represented the Times,and the Sulzberger family, since 1948,and sought legal advice elsewhere. “Weare going to look back on these days as64 Nieman Reports / Fall 1999