Voting Station

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Sr.

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Publisher

The Resume

    (February 5, 1926-September 29, 2012)
    Born in New York City, New York
    Publisher of the New York Times (1963-92)
    Chairman of the board of the New York Times Company (1963-97)
    Succeeded at both positions by his son, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.

Why he might be annoying:

    Growing up, he was such a lousy student that his parents thought he might be dyslexic.
    The New York Times is owned by an Ochs-Sulzberger family trust, which played no small part in his being named publisher.
    He complained that his paper was anti-business: 'If you were a corporation, you were wrong, no matter what you were doing.'
    He violated his usual hands-off policy to demand that the Times endorse Daniel Patrick Moynihan over Bella Abzug in the Democratic primary election for US Senator (1976), prompting his editor to protest via a letter to the editor (or in other words, a letter to himself).
    He liked to write letters to the editor of the Times under the pseudonym 'A. Sock.'
    He signed interoffice memos with his childhood nickname, 'Punch.'
    He wrote truly dreadful puns. (Example: 'The nationalist Chinese are extremely apprehensive when Mr. Nixon dinks with Premier Chou. Are they scared he'll Taiwan on?')

Why he might not be annoying:

    He joined the Marines at 17 and served in World War II and the Korean War.
    He hired William Safire as a columnist to provide some conservative balance to an otherwise mostly liberal editorial page.
    He rarely interfered with the newspaper's content, with editor John B. Oakes saying, 'I literally can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I had to go to bat for an editorial.'
    He went to court over the Times' First Ammendment right to publish the Pentagon Papers (1971).
    While he was publisher, the Times won the Pulitzer Prize 31 times.
    He took over the paper when it was precarious financial condition following a printers' strike and put it on a secure footing.
    He said, 'A financially sound Times is also good newspapering. A newspaper that is broke is not going to be able to spend the money necessary to support thorough and aggressive reporting.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 21 Votes: 19.05% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 5 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 8 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 6 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 16 Votes: 62.50% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 91 Votes: 57.14% Annoying