Description
For some two decades, Abe Rosenthal was arguably the most powerful person in print journalism in the world. As executive editor of The New York Times, he exerted tremendous influence and control over "All the news that's fit to print," the paper's self-described mission as bulletin board for The American Establishment.
Fit to Print examines Rosenthal's rise to power and the enormous use of his position. It addresses the question of whether to be an effective executive, one must be both Caesar and Caligula. Rosenthal had characteristics of both Roman emperors. The Times and many people benefited from his many talents. Others suffered, for the editor whose byline was A. M. Rosenthal was not always the most pleasant of men, personally or professionally.
Rosenthal's distinguished but stormy career at the Times started in 1944. At the time, serious newspapers relied upon official records for the bulk of their reportage. These were conveyed to readers in relatively short and unadorned stories. By the time he retired in late 1986, not only had investigative reporting blossomed, but news-papers devoted dozens of columns daily to stories probing the mores and morals as well as the misfeasance of society.
The stereotypical Front Page reporter, fedora cocked jauntily on his head and whiskey flask in his coat, has been replaced by university trained specialists who often have doctorates in the subjects about which they write.
A second transformation in the news business was the rise of television as the primary news source for most Americans. Rosenthal's Times challenged the visual medium by offering readers a depth of information impossible in a 30-minute TV news broadcast. Inevitably this led to a "softening" of the news product, and the substitute for reportorial opinion for the "just-the-facts, ma'am" reporting of an earlier era.
Rosenthal took the Times through this dual revolution, to the paper's great profit. Indeed, he must be credited in large part for the survival of the Times as a great American newspaper at a time when newspapers elsewhere floundered financially.
