The rumors of our death – as a newspaper business – have once again been greatly exaggerated.
Mark Twain said it first, long before Politico magazine’s senior media writer Jack Shafer decided to try building a coffin for print newspapers in his Sunday piece titled “Sell the New York Times. Now. And other unsolicited advice for A.G. Sulzberger.”
The piece opens with Chattanooga.
“The cult worship of The New York Times commenced not long after that day in 1896 when Adolph S. Ochs of Chattanooga, Tennessee, spent a mess of borrowed money to purchase controlling ownership in the respected but failing Republican-tilting paper and appoint himself publisher.”
The occasion for Shafer’s writing, dripping with sarcasm, was the Times’ announcement of another generation – about five or six now – ascending to take the “throne” of “King Ochs.” Ochs’ 37-year-old great-great-grandson, A.G. Sulzberger, became publisher of the paper Jan. 1.