Arthur Ochs Sulzberger - Publisher of The New York Times

Publisher of The New York Times

Sulzberger became publisher of The New York Times in 1963, after the death of his sister Marian's husband, Orvil Dryfoos, who had been publisher for less than two years. Sulzberger was 37 at the time, the youngest publisher in Times history. Prior to Dryfoos, Sulzberger's father, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, and maternal grandfather, Adolph Ochs, were the publishers, and also the chairs of the board of The New York Times Company.

In the 1960s Sulzberger built a large news-gathering staff at The Times, and was publisher when the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for publishing The Pentagon Papers. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988. His son Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. succeeded him as the newspaper's publisher in 1992.

"Eventually, Sulzberger, then in London, rejecting the views of some of his colleagues in senior management as well as the dire warnings of his outside counsel, made the call to accept the risks of publication rather than those of silence. On Sunday, June 13, the Times published the first in a series of seven articles about the Pentagon Papers. In retrospect, the decision may seem obvious, but it was by no means an easy one at the time, and it remains one for which Sulzberger deserves enormous credit."