There’s a motto beneath our nameplate on the front page: “To Give the News Impartially, Without Fear or Favor.”
Adolph Ochs, who purchased The Chattanooga Times and became its teenage publisher at a time when he wasn’t even allowed to vote, put it there in the 1800s.
Ochs came from independent-minded parents: His mother, Bertha, moved to Knoxville in 1861 and joined sides with the Confederacy. Father Julius enlisted in the Union Army. “Thus Adolph’s parents modeled early in his life the importance of sticking to principles, regardless of the discomfort they might cause others,” according to jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
The young publisher thrived and 18 years later bought The New York Times. It was the era of “yellow journalism,” and publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were printing lurid and scandalous news accounts in a quest for readers.
Ochs took another tack: He separated opinion from the news pages and charted a course toward objective, responsible and independent journalism. He adopted the motto in New York of “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” He also dropped the price from 3 cents a copy to 1, gambling that New Yorkers and the country would embrace his focus on ethical news-gathering.