If today's New York Times - certainly the most influential,
and some would say the best, newspaper in the world - is the
handiwork of any single individual, that person is A. M.
Rosenthal.

For 17 years he ran the news operation at "the Grey Lady".
The paper he inherited in 1969 then lived up to its
sobriquet: as authoritative and reliable as you could wish,
but also plodding, formulaic, and downright tedious. The one
he bequeathed to Max Frankel, his successor in the editor's
chair, was not exactly flashy, and had certainly lost none
of its authority. It was, on the other hand, incomparably
more entertaining, accessible and comprehensive.

Rosenthal demanded good writing - and writing about topics
that genuinely interested readers. He developed coverage of
New York itself - a topic the Times had been accused of
loftily ignoring. He both broadened foreign and domestic
news, and introduced the paper's now familiar system of
sections, devoting new ones to the arts, science, food,
style and homes.

Under Rosenthal The New York Times was transformed into a
genuinely national paper. During his tenure it harvested 24
Pulitzer Prizes, the Oscars of American journalism,
sometimes scooping two or three in a single year. The
editorial improvements paid off financially as well; between
1969 and 1987 revenues of the New York Times Company jumped
from $238m to $1.6bn, while profits rose from a paltry $14m
to $132m in the year he stepped down.

In the process he became the most influential editor in the
country, his only conceivable rival Ben Bradlee at the
Washington Post. The two were competitors for the story that
earned both men their early reputations - the publication in
1971 of the Pentagon Papers, a vast and secret government
account of a quarter-century of US involvement in Vietnam.

The initial scoop went to the Times, although the Post soon
caught up. But publication, for which no one fought harder
than Rosenthal, was a massive gamble, that might have ruined
both papers.It paid off, and the Supreme Court decision
upholding the paper's right to publish, and suppressing the
government's claim to the right of "prior restraint", was a
mighty landmark in the history of American press freedom.

Newspapering was not in Abe Rosenthal's blood. His father
was a Belorussian Jew who emigrated to Canada in 1903, and
made a living as a trapper and fur trader before moving to
New York in the 1930s. They settled in the Bronx. There the
young Abe went to school, was stricken with and overcame the
bone-marrow disease osteomyelitis, and attended university
at City College.

When he joined the campus newspaper, his life's course was
set. Quickly his talents as a reporter became evident, and
in 1944 he was taken on by the Times. His first major beat
was the United Nations, followed by a stint in New Delhi and
then in Poland - the assignment that fully revealed his
gifts as a journalist.

A trip to the former Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz
revealed the personal style that made his writing so
distinctive. "And so there is no news to report from
Auschwitz," he told readers, as if dropping a line to a
friend:

There is merely the compulsion to write about it, a
compulsion that grows out of a restless feeling that to have
visited Auschwitz and to have turned away without having
said or written anything would be a most grievous act of
discourtesy to those who died there.

After two years the Poles expelled him, but not before he
had written many brave, perceptive and extraordinarily
revealing pieces about the Communist regime of Wladyslaw
Gomulka and life under it. His expulsion order from Warsaw
authorities in 1959 was in fact a paean to his skills. He
had written "very deeply and in detail about the internal
situation", and the Polish government "cannot tolerate such
probing reporting".

But brilliant foreign correspondents are no rarity, least of
all on The New York Times. Brilliant editors are. It was
Turner Catledge, the Times's then managing editor, who
persuaded Rosenthal to take the plunge. He was first given
the job of shaking up the paper's staid local news coverage.
So successful was he that he was made Assistant Managing
Editor in 1966. Three years later he became Managing
Editor - in British parlance, simply "Editor".

With his horn-rimmed glasses and shock of black hair,
Rosenthal ruled the newsroom like a cockerel its roost. He
was the ultimate "hands on" manager, gathering all power
into his hands. His volcanic eruptions of anger were
legendary. Not surprisingly, he was a fiercely polarising
figure. Admirers insisted that he merely imposed the highest
standards, and that those who fell foul of him simply did
not measure up. His detractors (often those whom Rosenthal
forced to resign or sidelined) accused him of bullying and
favouritism. The editor, they complained, demanded loyalty
to himself, rather than the Times, and had wrecked staff
morale by operating little short of a reign of terror. But
no one denied his ability, or what Frankel, in his own
bitter-sweet 1999 memoir, Times of My Life and My Life with
the Times, would describe as Rosenthal's "brilliant
instinctive news judgement".

As head of the Times's news operation, Rosenthal insisted
that nothing was sacred, other than the paper's bedrock
quality of objectivity, or "fairness" as he called it.
Throughout his tenure Rosenthal scrupulously maintained the
iron division between news and comment - indeed on the
Times, the Post and many other major US papers the news
pages and the op-ed section are entirely separate and
independent operations.

In 1987 Rosenthal himself crossed that great divide when he
stepped down as editor to join the op-ed pages, where for 12
years he wrote a column, entitled "On My Mind". Repression,
human rights and scourges like the drugs trafficking were
frequent topics, along with Israel and the security of the
Jewish state. The tone was often passionate, but sometimes
tetchy and crotchety. Later on, some wits had redubbed it
"Out of My Mind".

The column ended in 1999, when Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jnr,
who had succeeded his father seven years before, told him
simply, "It was time." It was an unhappy ending to a 55-year
career at The New York Times. Like him or loathe him, Abe
Rosenthal was a titan of modern American journalism.

Rupert Cornwell

Abraham Michael Rosenthal, journalist: born Sault Ste Marie,
Ontario 2 May 1922; staff, New York Times 1944-86, Managing
Editor 1969-77, Executive Editor 1977-86, columnist 1987-99;
married 1949 Ann Marie Burke (three sons; marriage dissolved
1986), 1987 Shirley Lord; died New York 10 May 2006.

If today's New York Times - certainly the most influential,
and some would say the best, newspaper in the world - is the
handiwork of any single individual, that person is A. M.
Rosenthal.

For 17 years he ran the news operation at "the Grey Lady".
The paper he inherited in 1969 then lived up to its
sobriquet: as authoritative and reliable as you could wish,
but also plodding, formulaic, and downright tedious. The one
he bequeathed to Max Frankel, his successor in the editor's
chair, was not exactly flashy, and had certainly lost none
of its authority. It was, on the other hand, incomparably
more entertaining, accessible and comprehensive.

Rosenthal demanded good writing - and writing about topics
that genuinely interested readers. He developed coverage of
New York itself - a topic the Times had been accused of
loftily ignoring. He both broadened foreign and domestic
news, and introduced the paper's now familiar system of
sections, devoting new ones to the arts, science, food,
style and homes.

Under Rosenthal The New York Times was transformed into a
genuinely national paper. During his tenure it harvested 24
Pulitzer Prizes, the Oscars of American journalism,
sometimes scooping two or three in a single year. The
editorial improvements paid off financially as well; between
1969 and 1987 revenues of the New York Times Company jumped
from $238m to $1.6bn, while profits rose from a paltry $14m
to $132m in the year he stepped down.

In the process he became the most influential editor in the
country, his only conceivable rival Ben Bradlee at the
Washington Post. The two were competitors for the story that
earned both men their early reputations - the publication in
1971 of the Pentagon Papers, a vast and secret government
account of a quarter-century of US involvement in Vietnam.

The initial scoop went to the Times, although the Post soon
caught up. But publication, for which no one fought harder
than Rosenthal, was a massive gamble, that might have ruined
both papers.It paid off, and the Supreme Court decision
upholding the paper's right to publish, and suppressing the
government's claim to the right of "prior restraint", was a
mighty landmark in the history of American press freedom.

Newspapering was not in Abe Rosenthal's blood. His father
was a Belorussian Jew who emigrated to Canada in 1903, and
made a living as a trapper and fur trader before moving to
New York in the 1930s. They settled in the Bronx. There the
young Abe went to school, was stricken with and overcame the
bone-marrow disease osteomyelitis, and attended university
at City College.

When he joined the campus newspaper, his life's course was
set. Quickly his talents as a reporter became evident, and
in 1944 he was taken on by the Times. His first major beat
was the United Nations, followed by a stint in New Delhi and
then in Poland - the assignment that fully revealed his
gifts as a journalist.

A trip to the former Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz
revealed the personal style that made his writing so
distinctive. "And so there is no news to report from
Auschwitz," he told readers, as if dropping a line to a
friend:

There is merely the compulsion to write about it, a
compulsion that grows out of a restless feeling that to have
visited Auschwitz and to have turned away without having
said or written anything would be a most grievous act of
discourtesy to those who died there.

After two years the Poles expelled him, but not before he
had written many brave, perceptive and extraordinarily
revealing pieces about the Communist regime of Wladyslaw
Gomulka and life under it. His expulsion order from Warsaw
authorities in 1959 was in fact a paean to his skills. He
had written "very deeply and in detail about the internal
situation", and the Polish government "cannot tolerate such
probing reporting".

But brilliant foreign correspondents are no rarity, least of
all on The New York Times. Brilliant editors are. It was
Turner Catledge, the Times's then managing editor, who
persuaded Rosenthal to take the plunge. He was first given
the job of shaking up the paper's staid local news coverage.
So successful was he that he was made Assistant Managing
Editor in 1966. Three years later he became Managing
Editor - in British parlance, simply "Editor".

With his horn-rimmed glasses and shock of black hair,
Rosenthal ruled the newsroom like a cockerel its roost. He
was the ultimate "hands on" manager, gathering all power
into his hands. His volcanic eruptions of anger were
legendary. Not surprisingly, he was a fiercely polarising
figure. Admirers insisted that he merely imposed the highest
standards, and that those who fell foul of him simply did
not measure up. His detractors (often those whom Rosenthal
forced to resign or sidelined) accused him of bullying and
favouritism. The editor, they complained, demanded loyalty
to himself, rather than the Times, and had wrecked staff
morale by operating little short of a reign of terror. But
no one denied his ability, or what Frankel, in his own
bitter-sweet 1999 memoir, Times of My Life and My Life with
the Times, would describe as Rosenthal's "brilliant
instinctive news judgement".

As head of the Times's news operation, Rosenthal insisted
that nothing was sacred, other than the paper's bedrock
quality of objectivity, or "fairness" as he called it.
Throughout his tenure Rosenthal scrupulously maintained the
iron division between news and comment - indeed on the
Times, the Post and many other major US papers the news
pages and the op-ed section are entirely separate and
independent operations.

In 1987 Rosenthal himself crossed that great divide when he
stepped down as editor to join the op-ed pages, where for 12
years he wrote a column, entitled "On My Mind". Repression,
human rights and scourges like the drugs trafficking were
frequent topics, along with Israel and the security of the
Jewish state. The tone was often passionate, but sometimes
tetchy and crotchety. Later on, some wits had redubbed it
"Out of My Mind".

The column ended in 1999, when Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jnr,
who had succeeded his father seven years before, told him
simply, "It was time." It was an unhappy ending to a 55-year
career at The New York Times. Like him or loathe him, Abe
Rosenthal was a titan of modern American journalism.

Abraham Michael Rosenthal, journalist: born Sault Ste Marie,
Ontario 2 May 1922; staff, New York Times 1944-86, Managing
Editor 1969-77, Executive Editor 1977-86, columnist 1987-99;
married 1949 Ann Marie Burke (three sons; marriage dissolved
1986), 1987 Shirley Lord; died New York 10 May 2006.