The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times

Tifft, Susan E., and Jones, Alex S.

ISBN 10: 0316845469 / ISBN 13: 9780316845465

Published by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, MA, 1999

About this Item

870 pages. Illus., genealogical chart, notes, index. Inscribed and signed by both co-authors. This extensive account examines how the Ochs-Sulzberger family guided The New York Times through a century's worth of challenges and preserved the journalistic integrity of the paper in the process. Interweaving colorful anecdotes with an analysis of how the paper navigated pivotal moments in history, this book offers a personal and professional glimpse into this historically unapproachable family. Bookseller Inventory # 56011

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family ...

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, Boston, MA

Publication Date: 1999

Binding: Hardcover

Book Condition: Very good

Dust Jacket Condition: very good

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First Edition. First Printing.

About this title

Synopsis:

An insider's biography of America's most powerful media dynasty draws on archival material from The New York Times and family resources to chronicle the rise to success of the visionary Adolph Ochs and his colorful descendants. 150,000 first printing. First serial, The New Yorker. Tour.

Review:

This mammoth history of the dynasty that created and controls The New York Times is as epic in its scope as is the role of the newspaper in America. Like any good epic, this story is filled with its fair share of personal ambition, disappointment, competing heirs to the throne, fierce loyalties, and powerful intrigue. The story of The Times starts in 1896, when Adolph Ochs, a young German Jew, buys the undistinguished and nearly bankrupt The New-York Times (the dash was later dropped). He worked hard to distinguish its style from the florid journalism that marked rival papers, and soon Ochs's paper, with its straightforward reporting, became the favorite of the Wall Street and Uptown sets. He toiled, too, to ensure that The Times never earned the moniker "too Jewish." Ochs assiduously declined to promote Jewish editors and was an outspoken opponent of the free state of Israel. And writers Susan Tifft and Alex Jones argue persuasively that in its drive to appear absolutely objective about Jewish issues, the paper (under the leadership at this point of Ochs's son-in-law Arthur Hays Sulzberger) underreported the Holocaust--keeping stories of Hitler's early maneuvers off the front page, failing to name concentration-camp victims as Jews. Though significant, World War II was just one moment in the hundred-year-long history of the paper thus far. The Trust vividly chronicles some of the The Times's most famous moments--the controversial publication of the Pentagon Papers and its transition to a publicly held company in the late '60s are just two--along with the personal histories of four generations of Ochses and Sulzbergers. With its strong foundation of well-researched facts, thoughtful analysis, and excellent narration, The Trust is itself a great work of journalism that does its storied subject proud. --Anna Baldwin