A.G. Sulzberger to assume publisher role at New York Times on Jan. 1 (original) (raw)

Here’s a “developing” story, if ever there was one: The New York Times announced Thursday morning that Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. will step down as the newspaper’s publisher at year’s end, vacating a post he has occupied since 1992. He will yield the desk to his son, 37-year-old A.G. Sulzberger, who has been training for the job for many years. A veteran of the Providence Journal and the Oregonian, he came aboard the New York Times in 2009 as a metro reporter and quickly learned the storied ropes of the building — including serving as the principal author of the newspaper’s 2014 “Innovation” report, which contained searing assessments of the transition to a digital news world. A.G. Sulzberger was elevated to deputy publisher in October 2016.

“It has been an extraordinary honor to serve as publisher of The New York Times,” said Arthur O. Sulzberger in a statement released by the paper, “and I will step down at the end of the year prouder than I have ever been of the strength, independence and integrity of this institution. My colleagues — the women and men who have devoted themselves to producing and distributing the world’s best journalism — have made my job so fulfilling and I am forever in their debt.” Arthur O. Sulzberger — who will remain as chairman of the New York Times Co. board of directors — took over as publisher from his father, Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, in 1992.

Arthur O. Sulzberger leaves a quarter-century of newspapering history behind: some of it glorious, such as the 60 Pulitzer Prizes and a surge in paying customers during the Trump era; some of it inglorious, such as the Jayson Blair fiasco, the reporting of Judith Miller et al. on the run-up to the Iraq War and the mishandling of former executive editor Jill Abramson’s exit from the newspaper. Such failures notwithstanding, the New York Times now claims an international audience of 130 million and 3.5 million paid subscriptions, a high point for the organization, according to a press release announcing the management change.

In his canned quote, A.G. Sulzberger said, “Arthur is the only publisher of his generation who took over a great news organization and left it better than he found it. The fortunate position The Times enjoys today was not a foregone conclusion; it is a direct result of the bold bets Arthur made, from taking the paper national and then international, to embracing the Internet, to insisting that great journalism is worth paying for.”

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Announcement of the junior Sulzberger’s ascension, which will come Jan. 1, has been expected for some time. This is not a shock. And the newspaper has been through some upheaval over the past year or so, including the streamlining of its editing process — and weakening of its staunch copy-editing function — and a round of buyouts. Such initiatives mean that the transition between publishers won’t likely trigger a drastic change of course for the New York Times — just more incremental and often painful changes needed to reorient a paper founded in 1851 toward the imperatives of news delivery in the 21st century.