hebrewscriptures
A century ago Jewish newsman Adolph Ochs made the New York Times America’s premier newspaper.
Few publications elicit the same passions, loyalties and criticisms as the New York Times. To its dedicated readers, it’s the “Grey Lady”, a reliable source of high-quality news delivered each day along with a dollop of reasonable editorial comments. To its detractors, it’s a frustrating mouthpiece for progressive issues.
Some recent missteps have outraged Jews and Israel supporters, too. Last year, in April 2019, some of the paper’s international readers were outraged to see a highly offensive anti-Semitic political cartoon in the paper’s overseas edition, depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leading US President Donald Trump around by a leash: a Jewish star was plastered on the leash in case anyone missed the age-old anti-Jewish stereotype of Jews controlling world leaders.
The paper apologised and changed its protocols, but according to New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, the newspaper’s problems went deeper than changing the way they approved cartoons. “The problem is that its publication was an astonishing act of ignorance of anti-Semitism — and that, at a publication that is otherwise hyper-alert to nearly every conceivable expression of prejudice…” He accused the paper of being blind to anti-Jewish bigotry, unable to recognise anti-Jewish hatred, even while it calls out other forms of prejudice.
It’s a criticism echoed by former New York Times editorial board member Bari Weiss, who quit last week, citing a culture where she was bullied for her conservative views and also for writing about Jewish issues.
It didn’t have to be this way. The New York Times was reimagined over 100 years ago by Adolph Simon Ochs, a visionary Jew. He coined the term “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, a promise that still graces a small square at the top left corner of each day’s New York Times. Ochs purchased the venerable newspaper in 1896 and did all he could to turn what was then a failing newspaper into the nation’s paper of record.
From an early age, Adolph learned that it was possible to disagree about politics and contemporary issues — even passionately — and still respect others who might hold different opinions. His parents, German Jewish immigrants, vividly illustrated the ability to disagree on major issues and still remain friends; they were on opposite sides of the slavery debate.
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Adolph’s father Julius Ochs had moved to the US from Germany when he was 19; Adolph’s mother Bertha Levy immigrated when she was 16. Julius spoke six languages and led the small Jewish community of Nashville, where he originally settled. They moved to Cincinnati and started building their large family.
When the US Civil War broke out in 1861, Julius volunteered for the Union Army and fought against the Confederacy and slavery. Bertha considered herself a southerner, and she helped the Confederate cause, smuggling medicines to troops in Kentucky, just over the Ohio River from her home. Their vastly different political inclinations seemed not to strain their relationship and Adolph grew up in a loving Jewish home, where political differences were respected.
After the war times were hard and the Ochs’ once thriving dry goods store was forced to close. Julius worked as a justice of the peace but for a tiny salary.
The family of seven were forced to move into a tiny, unpainted shack. Barely able to make ends meet, Adolph begged his parents to let him get a job. When he was 11 in 1869, they finally agreed and Adolph became a paper boy for the Knoxville Chronicle, folding 50 newspapers each morning and walking nearly five miles to deliver them. The $1,50 he earned each week helped the family survive.
Adolph continued in the newspaper business, quitting school at 15 to work full-time. While working at the Louisville Courier-Journal, his parents wrote that they couldn’t afford to buy Adolph’s brothers and sisters clothes for school; he sent them his entire savings of $56.
His first foray into newspaper ownership came in 1877 when Adolph joined two colleagues in buying the Chattanooga Dispatch. Overjoyed, he wrote home to his parents, envisioning days of prosperity for his brothers and sisters ahead: “May God spare you to see Nannie married to a millionaire; George President of the United States; Milton a Senator; Ada a famous author; and Mattie a successful merchant or a large-salaried Rabbi’s wife. As to myself, my prayer is that I may soon be able to make for you all a comfortable home where want is unknown and send my brothers and sisters on their different roads rejoicing,” he wrote to the family.
But the Chattanooga Dispatch failed and Adolph was left to settle its debts by using its printing presses to print pamphlets for local merchants. He told colleagues that he learned the importance of having a controlling stake in a newspaper, instead of relying on others.
Adolph soon bought another local paper, borrowing $250 to purchase a controlling stake in the ailing Chattanooga Times — “before he was old enough to vote”, his biographer Elmer Davis noted. At the time, “yellow journalism” was the norm; it was commonplace for newspapers to print lurid descriptions of murders and other sensationalist crimes. Truth wasn’t always a paper’s top priority. Adolph made a groundbreaking decision for a newspaper publisher: under his watch, the Chattanooga Times would be “clean, dignified and trustworthy”. It was a novel approach to journalism that Adolph would try to honour all his life. By 1896, Adolph was 38, he decided to take a risk and purchased the New York Times. —Aish.com
