Behind the Times (40 page)

Kovach let some of his wide circle of friends know that he was interested in moving on; one friend, Tom Winship, a former editor of the
Boston Globe
, did some matchmaking. At the end of 1986, Kovach left the
Times
to become editor of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
, the morning and afternoon papers owned by the Cox family. The papers were boosters of the “New South,” the business-minded, racially harmonious South that was “too busy to hate,” in the glib slogan of the day. Under Kovach’s prodding, the
Journal-Constitution
produced a thorough, meticulously documented exposé of Atlanta’s banks and their Old South practice of redlining—turning down mortgage applications for black prospective homeowners. Kovach was in Atlanta less than two years. He had a series of clashes with Jay Smith, the paper’s publisher. Kovach thought Smith was overly sensitive to the feelings of the clubby, downtown establishment—all-white, naturally—that “ran” Atlanta. After one argument, Kovach quit—and Smith accepted the resignation. The
Times
gave special attention to the stories, far beyond the interests of non-Atlantans. It carried two long stories, each with two-column pictures, and quoted Smith as saying that neither Kovach nor anyone else “is bigger than the newspapers themselves.” In the summer of 1989, Kovach became curator of the Nieman journalism program at Harvard.

That left the “new Abe,” John Vinocur. He arrived in 1985 in the third-floor newsroom, a man shot out of a cannon. Like Abe Rosenthal, Vinocur had been a star reporter. The
Times
twice nominated the work he did in its Bonn bureau for the Pulitzer Prize competitions. His
Times
stories were credited with helping change American perceptions of West Germany, from a country bound to U.S. policy to a resurgent power entering a new and more fractious relationship with its old mentor. In New York, Rosenthal made Vinocur his assistant—Rosenthal called the assignment “a good place to get a fast look at the paper.” Soon, Vinocur was deputy metro editor, helping run the staff of eighty. Rosenthal talked of new career moves. Other editors translated that to mean Vinocur was going to be the next executive editor. A
Times
editor offered a characterization typical of the paper’s self-image: “There was a laying on of the hands of Vinocur,” he remembered. The newsroom congregation watched as Rosenthal and his associates, managing editor Arthur Gelb and assistant managing editor for personnel James Greenfield, introduced Vinocur to the social activities that are the due of
Times
’ executives:
invitations to the fourteenth-floor editorial lunches, dinner parties, and nights at the opera. Vinocur also received some unsolicited marital counseling (to marry the woman he was living with) as well as advice on a new wardrobe.

Vinocur deciphered these signals as well as he could in after-hours talk with other
Times
people. He shared his feelings with his friends, Craig Whitney and Warren Hoge, two other
Times
editors still in their forties. Vinocur thought, and his friends agreed, that he was faring quite well within the
Times
culture. With the metro desk assignment, he had an excellent opportunity to enliven the
Times
’ rather pallid local reporting, and “showcase” his managerial talents.

The showcase turned out to be something of an open coffin for Vinocur’s career at the
Times.
In the summer of 1985, while the humiliation of Sydney Schanberg was going forward on the Op-Ed page, deputy metropolitan editor Vinocur supervised a story written by reporter Jane Perlez. The subject of the Perlez story was the developer and publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman. The article was revised extensively before publication. When it finally appeared, no one could accuse Perlez of the customary metro-page blandness. Zuckerman was described as “flamboyant … a shortish figure, with receding dark hair.…” He acquired the prime Coliseum site at Columbus Circle on the West Side after five years of “plotting.” According to Perlez, he entered “the publishing ranks” by buying the monthly
Atlantic
magazine and the weekly
U.S. News
&
World Report
and then “befriended writers, editors, and television personalities in an effort to win a place in their world.” This portrait of Zuckerman as arriviste was accompanied by an analysis of several Zuckerman business deals that ended in litigation. The article ran in the editions of August 5.

Within forty-eight hours, an “Editors’ Note” appeared on page three of the
Times
, in the space occupied by the regular “Corrections” box. The “Editors’ Note” heading in the
Times
was pure Rosenthal: He had initiated it as part of a dogged, decade-long effort to establish a magisterial “canon” for journalistic performance at the
Times.
Notes did not appear often, but when they did there was no way for readers, or
Times
people, to miss them. The “Editors’ Note” on the Perlez article found it to be “opinionated, pejorative, and unbalanced.” The note concluded with a judgment about the story’s use of anonymous sources that was as blunt as a blow to the head: “They should not have appeared.”

Vinocur had not been back in New York long enough to realize that Zuckerman’s litigious ways could extend to the
Times.
The editor’s grooming for bigger things had left out an important lesson: Among Zuckerman’s acquaintances in the news-lit world, he counted Abe Rosenthal. Zuckerman sent a three-page, single-space letter to Rosenthal by hand the afternoon of August 5. Two days later, the “Editors’ Note” excoriating Perlez was in type.

Perlez’s career at the
Times
was not fatally damaged. She rode out the episode and eventually received a prized assignment to be the
Times
’ East African correspondent, based in Nairobi. Vinocur never rose any higher at the
Times
than his deputy editor’s job; he could no longer move up, only out. But his fallback position was one that journalists fantasize about: He became the editor of the
International Herald Tribune
, a post of near-legendary status (one’s own paper, and in Paris!). The appointment suggested how highly regarded John Vinocur was. He did not let down his remaining
Times
supporters in his new job, and remained reasonably free of rancor about his “New York adventure.” In retrospect, Vinocur says that while he saw himself as a candidate for the
Times
’ top editor’s job, “I didn’t see myself as a successful candidate.” He declined any other public comment, on the grounds that he was “a member of the
Times
family” (the
International Herald Tribune
is partly owned by the New York Times Company).

Kovach made a similar point about his own chances. Kovach believes that he “didn’t quite fit the image of what the
Times
’ leader should be.” But then who did fit? For that matter, what were the attributes that added up to make the proper leader? One or another of the several candidates appeared to be running with a handicap: too aggressive, or not aggressive enough; not sufficiently polished, or a bit too pompous; light on administrative experience, or not enough service in the field.

One man, however, not only matched the profile of ideal editor, he was the editor in reality. Once the notion had taken hold around the newsroom that Abe Rosenthal did not intend to step aside at sixty-five and that the whole selection process was illusory, the editor-for-life story became difficult to spike. It wouldn’t go away. Rosenthal impatiently dismissed the allegations of his unwillingness to give up the editor’s post. What kind of executive would have to be prevailed upon to groom his successor? he asked an interviewer in 1983. It was meant as a rhetorical question, with the clear message that Rosenthal
was
preparing to find the next editor. The process had been thorough. He put in motion an elaborate administrative structure. He gave his senior editors “a chance to see the workings of the paper,” as he put it in a memo to managing editor Gelb and assistant managing editor Seymour Topping. When one or another of this editorial troika was away on vacation or traveling on the periodic trips to visit bureaus in the field, editors from the executive level immediately below handled the absentee executive’s duties. Because Gelb and Topping were in Rosenthal’s age group, and therefore not considered realistic candidates to succeed him, Rosenthal reasoned that the three friends could act as a panel of judges, assaying the men working with them. In this way, “the next generation of leadership,” in Rosenthal’s favored phrase, would emerge.

There was some snickering in the newsroom about “Abe’s game of musical chairs,” but if anything Rosenthal intensified the process. On February 1, 1983, Rosenthal announced in a memo, marked Confidential and addressed to Punch Sulzberger, that the effort to find the successor generation would be at the top of
“my MBO list.”

Sulzberger understood the shorthand. The 1970s’ Argyris experience behind him, Punch Sulzberger had swallowed hard once again and approved a new administrative exercise for senior executives of the
Times
: the practice of annual written declarations of work goals, or Management By Objective. The idea had emerged from the Harvard Business School. (Not until the arrival of Demingism in the 1990s was the
Times
apparently able to find expertise from beyond Cambridge.) The
Times
’ MBO memoranda required executives to set down at the beginning of each new year their personal and organizational goals for the months ahead. In his February 1, 1983, memo to the publisher, Rosenthal announced that he was tearing up his earlier MBO for 1983—a proposal to hire the management firm of McKinsey and company to do a study of
Times
staffing (more B-School expertise). In its place, Rosenthal offered a new MBO: “to prepare and put into operation, with the agreement of the publisher, a specific plan that would enable him subsequently to select the next top leadership of the paper.” Rosenthal’s accompanying explanation for the change sounded a strange, elegaic note, as if he had sat down to compose a formal business memo and wrote instead a “September Song.” “As the years ahead for personal MBOs on my part dwindle,” Rosenthal declared, “they become rather more important to me than less. It becomes a
matter of personal satisfaction and obligation to make sure that the MBOs I undertake have meaning for me in my job and contribution.”

Seven months later, Rosenthal announced a series of six “promotions and assignment changes” in the newsroom, including the elevation of Craig Whitney and Warren Hoge to new positions. The selection of a new Pope could not involve more
in camera
intrigue. Rosenthal summoned each of the six editors affected to private meetings. He also met with a half dozen others who were, as Rosenthal put it, “editors of importance to the paper not involved” in the promotions and therefore likely to feel “wounded in spirit” because they had been passed over. After these one-on-one sessions, Rosenthal summed up for Sulzberger what he had said to each editor: “I told every person [that] there is
no list of ‘ins’ or ‘outs.’ There is no race to be the executive editor after I retire. What is taking place is the continuation of a process that started years ago and will continue for the next three or four years—a natural process of management growth.” The editors, Rosenthal informed Sulzberger, were also told: “All jobs from now on are to be considered stepping stones.” Finally, Rosenthal reported to Sulzberger, “I told them to discourage gossip among their colleagues because that gossip could only hurt them and each other.” Rosenthal concluded on a note of delusive self-satisfaction: “I feel now that there are no secrets, that everybody understood that there are no lists, that the procedure is open and understood.”

Rosenthal was not a very good reporter covering his own story. Others involved contradicted his account of the supposedly open, noncompetitive, straightforward procedure. A number of editors grew convinced that just the opposite was true. Bill Kovach, who can now look back on the succession maneuvering with a degree of dispassion, says, mildly: “I’m not sure to this day how the ‘contest’ worked.” Another editor thought there was a “search only in the formal sense—that Sulzberger knew what he intended to do all along.” Others take an exquisitely conspiratorial view of Rosenthal’s visiting editor program, arguing that it was actually an invitation to self-immolation. Each guest editor in turn would, by reason of inexperience or temperament or flawed performance, fall short of the ideal, or be perceived to have failed. They would be returned to their departmental editorships, or to foreign assignments. New aspirants would then be brought up. The “nonexistent list” could stretch through the newsroom’s next “next generation,” younger editors in their forties such as Allan Siegal, Joseph
Lelyveld, and Howell Raines. A perpetual motion machine, in short. Yet the competition, endless as it was, would never be an open one. Max Frankel, an editor of acknowledged stature, as well as the strongest Rosenthal rival, was conveniently excluded.

A number of people thought the biggest secret of all might be that Rosenthal was cleverly prolonging his stay, adding to the Rosenthal legend. If the
Times
saw itself as the indispensable paper of the elites, then perhaps its leader was the irreplaceable editor of the elites. Rosenthal may never have consciously accepted this. He may have believed in his personal MBO. It wouldn’t be unusual if there were two Rosenthals who showed up every day in the editor’s office, one convinced he was preparing the succession, the other at some deeper level unwilling to surrender his post. Public life is full of examples of such executive schizophrenia.

Five years after the succession process, Rosenthal dismissed all such talk. “Why the hell would I expect to stay on,” he said. “We had the age sixty-five retirement rule.
Did I want to go at the stroke of sixty-five? No. But I knew the most I could expect was to stay until I was sixty-six.” He felt happy, and amply rewarded, doing his twice-weekly column for the
Times.
Still, Rosenthal added, who could turn down a lifetime tenure in the greatest job at the greatest place in all of journalism. “If anyone asked me, do I want to be editor for life, and sit back forever in the job, like Bradlee, or Shawn, I’d say ‘sure.’ But it was never in my mind that it could happen.” The evocation of the names of Benjamin Bradlee of the
Washington Post
and William Shawn of
The New Yorker
suggested that, at the least, the idea of staying had occurred to Rosenthal, if only to match the record of two other leading editors of the day. Shawn remained the reclusive editor of
The New Yorker
until he was eighty; he yielded his editorship only reluctantly in 1987. Bradlee became top editor of the
Washington Post
in the same era that Rosenthal was consolidating his power at the
Times
—and Bradlee continued to run the
Post
until his seventieth birthday in August 1991.