Newspapers: A Rebel's Look at the Kingdom

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In 1965, Gay Talese quit his job as a general news reporter on the New York Times. His byline was appearing with increasing frequency, and "I liked working there," he says. "But I felt stifled by the dullness of the writing they demanded in those years." He switched to magazine writing and quickly made a name for himself as a practitioner of the so-called "new journalism" — highly interpretive reporting enlivened with plenty of descriptive personal detail. His gossipy profile of Times Managing Editor Clifton Daniel in Esquire became the talk of the publishing world. And thus began his backbreaking task of researching and writing the new-journalism version of the history of the Times.

Talese is now correcting galley proofs of the 200,000-word result, entitled The Kingdom and the Power and scheduled for spring publication by World-New American Library. In the book, Talese examines every aspect of the Times, measures its influence, analyzes its right to be called one of the world's greatest newspapers — if not the greatest. Whether he has succeeded remains to be seen when his book appears. In the January and February issues of Harper's magazine, he publishes advance excerpts running to 40,000 words, dealing mostly with the newspaper's power structure.

Talese traces the control of the Times from Adolph Ochs, who bought the failing paper in 1896, to Ochs' grandson, Arthur Ochs ("Punch") Sulzberger, who at 42 is now publisher.

As seen by Talese, the Times is "a medieval modern kingdom within the nation, with its own private laws and values." The paper is "the Bible, emerging each morning with a view of life that thousands of readers accept as reality." Within the sprawling kingdom, several dukes jealously protect their own fiefdoms and young knights strive to develop their own. It is a kingdom filled with tension. "During the last few years a quiet revolution has been going on within the Times," writes Talese. "Older Timesmen feared that the paper was losing touch with its tradition and younger men felt trapped by tradition."

Greater Glory. Perhaps most startling is Talese's unflattering portrait of Executive Editor James ("Scotty") Reston, one of the best-liked and most respected journalists in the U.S., who is depicted as a master of corporate tactics and intrigue. Talese calls him a "Times-man in the old sense, a man emotionally committed to the institution as a way of life, a religion, a cult." As Washington bureau chief in the early '60s, Reston developed a first-class staff and a close friendship with the publisher, the late Orvil Dryfoos (husband of an Ochs granddaughter). It was virtually impossible for editors in New York to over rule Reston, even though some out ranked him. "His artistry as an administrator could not be measured simply by the fact that he usually got his own way," writes Talese. "What was more interesting was that Reston's way, as he presented it, seemed solely designed for the greater glory of the New York Times."