NY Times Legend A.M. Rosenthal Dead

A.M. Rosenthal, who began his journalism career in 1943 as a lowly campus stringer for The New York Times, and went on to a storied career at the newspaper, died Wednesday in Manhattan at age 84.

He died from complications from a stroke he suffered two weeks ago, the Times said. His obituary ran on the front page of the paper he helped define.

Rosenthal rose to police reporter, Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent and managing editor. Rosenthal, known as Abe, eventually became executive editor, a post he held for nine years beginning in 1977. Even after stepping down, he became a columnist.

"Abe was a giant among journalists," retired Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger said in a statement. "He was a great editor with extraordinary loyalty to his troops."

Rosenthal is credited with lifting the newspaper from economic doldrums in the 1970s and molding it into a journalistic juggernaut known for distinguished reporting of national and world affairs.

On his watch, the Times published the Pentagon Papers, a history of America's secret involvement in Vietnam, which won the paper one of its many Pulitzers in 1972. But the paper started slowly on Watergate and never caught up with the rival Washington Post on the seminal story that brought down a president.

In 1986, facing mandatory retirement, Rosenthal stepped down as editor to assume a new role as a twice-weekly columnist. Thirteen years later, he was abruptly dismissed, with no explanation, he said, other than a comment by Times publisher and Sulzberger's son, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., that "it's time."

Born in Canada, Rosenthal was a naturalized U.S. citizen who grew up in the Bronx.

Graduating from City College of New York with a bachelor of science degree, he joined the Times as a full-time staffer in 1944 and spent two years as a police beat and general assignment reporter before a plum assignment in 1946 to cover the then-new United Nations. He later covered India and Poland, winning a Pulitzer in 1960.

In 1969, taking the helm of a paper then in financial distress, Rosenthal, as managing editor and later as executive editor, effected sweeping changes to expand advertising and readership. He beefed up the Times' metropolitan coverage, added a daily business section and specialty sections on sports, weekend features and science and pumped new life into its prose.

"We wanted to expand the paper, make it more interesting to more people but also keep its character," Rosenthal said in an interview after leaving the Times. His famous newsroom maxim was "keep the story straight."

In an editorial marking his departure, the Times said Rosenthal's "devotion to quality journalism made him one of the principal architects of the modern New York Times."

Though he was acknowledged as a brilliant and incisive editor, Rosenthal's temperament was less admired. To some detractors he was overbearing and autocratic.

R.W. "Johnny" Apple, a top Times reporter for four decades, was quoted in a 1999 magazine article as saying Rosenthal "was not the nicest man to work for, but, and there's a major but, he may have saved The New York Times."

As editor, Rosenthal barred the use of "Ms." or the word "gay" in reference to homosexuals, a far cry from the Times' later emphasis on diversity. He also began the paper's practice, now imitated by many others, of running corrections as a prominent daily fixture.

Rosenthal stepped down as executive editor in 1986 at age 64, a year short of the paper's mandatory retirement age, and began a twice-weekly op-ed column called "On My Mind."

His final column, on Nov. 5, 1999, was headlined "Read This Column," the same as used for his first entry 13 years earlier. Within days after his dismissal, Rosenthal found a new forum for the column at the Daily News, a crosstown tabloid.

In 2002, Rosenthal received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Bush said his outspoken defense of persecuted Christians in Asia, Africa and the Middle East "truly made him his brother's keeper."

Rosenthal is survived by his wife, author Shirley Lord, and three sons from his first marriage: Jonathan, Daniel, and Andrew, who is the deputy editorial page editor of the Times. Other survivors include four grandchildren, a sister and his first wife, Ann Marie Burke.