Peoria Pundit

Rosenthal, Ex-Times Editor, Pulitzer Winner, Dies

May 10 (Bloomberg) — A.M. Rosenthal, a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist who led the paper when it challenged the government’s attempt to keep secrets from the public, died of a stroke in New York today. He was 84.

Rosenthal, the top editor at the newspaper from 1977 to 1986, died at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan, two weeks after suffering a stroke, the New York Times Co. said in a statement.

Abe M. Rosenthalwas a reporter for 19 years, covering the United Nations, India and Japan, and won the 1960 Pulitzer for his coverage of the Communist regime in Poland, which had expelled him. After becoming an editor in 1963, Rosenthal was named managing editor in 1969 and executive editor eight years later.

What the immediate coverage doesn’t state is how absolutely hated he was in some circles. Of course, a lot of that had to do with his abrasive personality. The rest of it had to do with jealousy, his insistance on objectivity in the news pages and his absolute hatred of communism. Remember, he was a boss the 1970s and 1980s, when the media was abandoning objectivity in favor of analysis on the newspaged, when more and more reporters considered themselves on a mission to promote their world view covertly in their coverage. Being anti-communist didn’t help him with critics, most of whom grew up under the myth that Stalin and Mao were simply misunderstood. Which is understandable since they don’t teach school kids about the purges or the Cultural Revolution.

UPDATE: Here is the NYT version, registration may be required.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 8:31 pm and is filed under Overset. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.