Death of Ochs

To the up-&-coming town of Chattanooga, Tenn. nearly 60 years ago went a serious, purposeful young Jew. He had been working around newspaper print shops since he was eleven. Now, at 20, he wanted to start a newspaper of his own. With his personal fortune of $37.50 plus $250 he borrowed, he bought control of the bankrupt Chattanooga Times.

Last week the same newspaper owner, Adolph Simon Ochs, arrived in Chattanooga again, to visit his successful Times, for which he had never lost affection throughout the years that he published a far greater newspaper in Manhattan. He was old now--77--and in precarious health. Publisher Ochs joined heartily in a staff meeting in the Chattanooga city room. Then with his brother Col. Milton Ochs and a few other relatives he went to a restaurant for luncheon. Brother Milton asked him what he wanted to eat. He sat dumb, not hearing, not seeing. Few hours later Death stopped the heart of Adolph Ochs, publisher of the New York Times.

Sudden as it was, the death of Publisher Ochs was not unexpected. For more than a year his own New York Times had his obituary in type, in 16 black-bordered columns. It told the familiar story of the poor boy, born in Cincinnati to cultured German parents who took him to Knoxville, Tenn. where, at eleven, he began delivering papers; how he became printer's devil and learned the pressman's trade. It recalled his dogged determination and the editorial shrewdness by which he made the Chattanooga Times a thriving. potent newspaper. Then came the day in 1896 when Adolph Ochs, 38. heard of a chance to acquire the New York Times. To a publisher friend he confided: "I don't believe I'm a big enough man for the job." "Don't tell anybody," was his friend's advice, "and they'll never find it out." The New York Times was in even worse shape than the Chattanooga paper when Adolph Ochs bought it. It had only 9,000 circulation, owed $300,000 and was losing $1,000 every day. Against it was not only Bennett's Herald but also Pulitzer's World and Hearst's Journal, each trying to outdo the other in yellowness. Then it was that Adolph Ochs introduced to New York the editorial formula which was to shape the journalistic standards of the entire country. With his new-coined slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print," he announced a "clean, dignified and trustworthy" newspaper for "thoughtful, pure-minded people."

Also in his first year Adolph Ochs took another bold step which was significantly prophetic. He rejected $150.000 worth of advertising--enough to ensure the Times's success--which had been offered by the Tammany-controlled city government, because he feared even the appearance of evil. Less than four years after his arrival in Manhattan the Times was out of debt. In the next 38 years it amassed a daily circulation of 466,000.

Never a crusader, the Times became the greatest newspaper in the U. S. by the simple but difficult procedure of giving more news than any other. It won the first Pulitzer Prize in 1918 for publishing many official War documents and statesmen's speeches in full. Often it was dull, but never incomplete. It shunned comic strips, and breezy feature stories but was the first newspaper in the U. S. to offer rotogravure.

Adolph Ochs's impulsive genius was responsible for his first successes. He held what he had gained by surrounding himself with able men, like Editor Rollo Ogden, and famed Managing Editor Carr Van Anda; like his Business Manager Louis Wiley, who died last month (TIME, April 1), and his own Son-in-Law Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who married his only child Iphigene. With Son-in-Law Sulzberger at the helm, the Times, in the words of its obituary, is a monument with "meaning enough for one life."

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