Press: The Power at the Kingdom

Newspaper newsrooms are often unhappy places, but few are regularly likened to Stalinist Russia or Maoist China. Such were the favored metaphors among staffers of the New York Times under the iron grip of the paper’s former executive editor A.M. Rosenthal. With a hair-trigger temper and skin as thin as a sheet of newsprint, Rosenthal was known to be convivial one moment, then, at the slightest miscue, fly into a rage. Those who unquestioningly did his bidding thrived; many of those who crossed him made their careers outside the hallowed offices at Times Square.

Nevertheless, during his reign, from 1969 to 1986, Rosenthal introduced a more compelling, interpretive magazine-style journalism and ushered in the weekly specialty sections (Science, Living, etc.) that soon became the standard for the industry. In the process, he transformed the respected but financially moribund Times into one of the world’s most valuable media enterprises. How Rosenthal’s editorial talent propelled him to the pinnacle of American journalism despite what many agree are serious personality flaws is the theme of Joseph Goulden’s Fit to Print: A.M. Rosenthal and His Times (Lyle Stuart; $21.95).

Originally commissioned by Simon & Schuster, the manuscript of Fit to Print was rejected there and at a number of other top publishing houses. Goulden, author of 15 other books, including the 1972 best seller The Superlawyers, ultimately turned to Lyle Stuart, an imprint with a reputation for taking chances. Stuart claims that Simon & Schuster backed away because the book is too hard hitting and would offend the proprietors of the country’s most influential book review. Not true, says Simon & Schuster; Goulden’s work simply fell below its standards.

There are strong arguments for both sides. Charting Rosenthal’s rise at the Times from campus stringer at the City College of New York, Goulden provides a harsh account of his subject’s personal life, including his prolonged extramarital affair with actress Katharine Balfour, whom, says Goulden, he promised to marry but eventually abandoned. Still, Fit to Print is at times as sympathetic as it is damning. Goulden clearly shares many of Rosenthal’s conservative political views, and the author provides a sensitive account of the editor’s painful childhood, during which Rosenthal lost his father and three sisters to accident and illness and came perilously close to being crippled himself. Above all, Rosenthal is portrayed as profoundly insecure, a man who when casually asked by a stranger whether he was “an editor” at the Times, angrily snapped, “I am the editor of the New York Times.”

Unfortunately, Goulden fails to pull together his reporting and explain what made Rosenthal such a great newspaperman and what exactly Rosenthal’s legacy is. The book is sloppily edited and riddled with factual errors and misspellings of the names of prominently by-lined Times reporters. At one point, Goulden refers to Rosenthal’s semiweekly “On My Mind” column as “On My Head.”

While reporters at the Times are eagerly snapping up early copies of Fit to Print, Rosenthal, who has received a six-figure advance to write his memoirs, says he has not read it: “From what I can tell, it’s like walking into a mess in the street. You step in it; you try to wipe it from your foot.” Ironically, some of the best material in the book comes from Rosenthal, who at first refused to talk to Goulden but ultimately spent 20 hours with the author. “If you call Abe Rosenthal anything,” he told a mystified Goulden as their first meeting drew to a close, “call me anti-authoritarian.”