Mutiny at The Times

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times, had two visions for the most prestigious newspaper in America when he took over in 1992. He wanted it to be bigger as a media outlet, more national and more aggressive, competing with papers across the country on their turf. He wanted it to be happier as a workplace, more humane and more democratic.

Howell Raines, the man he chose to run the paper in 2001, was perhaps the best man to achieve the first half of Sulzberger's mission and possibly the worst choice to achieve the second. Under Raines' hard-driving leadership, the Times dominated coverage of news, including 9/11, and won seven Pulitzer Prizes in 2002. But in the process he infuriated reporters and editors, who complained that he favored a small coterie of star writers, pushed workers beyond reasonable limits and ruled by fear.

Raines and his No. 2, managing editor Gerald Boyd, resigned last week in an unprecedented downfall at a major American newspaper. At first glance, their toppling was the climax--the Times hopes--of a humiliating season of scandal that began with the disclosures that young reporter Jayson Blair had plagiarized or fabricated a string of stories. But at root, it was something more mundane and yet amazing: a workplace's staging a public mutiny to take down an unpopular boss. What fueled its unstoppable drama was that the mutiny took place at the country's most important (and some would add self-important) newspaper, placing an institution that is in the business of covering news suddenly at the center of a perfect news storm. And because the paper is the New York Times and the story evolved into one about the management style of its editor, every move to address the fallout from the Blair scandal only invited more coverage. Raines, famous for flooding the zone on big news stories, ironically ended up drowning in the coverage.

Speaking to TIME last week, Sulzberger said he was saddened by the resignations but not because he was responsible for choosing Raines. "You make choices," said Sulzberger. "Some work. Some don't work. My heart was broken because these men were taking an act for the good of an institution that they and I love." (A Times spokeswoman said Raines and Boyd would not comment for this article.) And indeed, the Blair scandal and its aftermath followed a decade in which Sulzberger had modernized and in many ways improved the staid Gray Lady. The son of the previous publisher and scion of a family that has owned the Times since 1896, Sulzberger beefed up the paper's features and cultural coverage, raised its profile nationally and internationally and pushed it to diversify into TV and the Web. Still, says Susan Tifft, a former TIME writer and co-author of The Trust, a history of the Sulzberger family, "Howell was really Arthur's 100% pick... So this would have to be seen at one level as a failure of Arthur's management."