The Times Of His Life: ARTHUR SULZERGER JR.

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One of Sulzberger's most notable efforts has been to increase diversity in the newsroom. "Anyone can buy a fancy press," Sulzberger says. "The race is for new talent, hiring it, keeping it. I say to minorities, Come and make us strong." He adds, "And we have to find a way not to judge talent by the traditional white male standard."

Nowhere has Sulzberger's expansive attitude been more apparent than in his treatment of gays. Rosenthal was called "homophobic" by the Advocate for refusing to use the term gay in print, among other things. One gay reporter lived in total secrecy, fearing the consequences if Rosenthal found out he was gay.

Sulzberger made a point of giving the Advocate his first interview after being named publisher, and he sent to the first national meeting of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association a videotaped speech in which he supported domestic-partnership benefits at the Times. Along with the & Advocate, he co-hosted a reception for the same group during the Democratic National Convention. Jeffrey Schmalz, who covers politics for the Times, says Sulzberger clearly lets it be known that he won't tolerate discrimination. "I collapsed in the newsroom and went to the hospital with what later would be diagnosed as AIDS. Arthur checked up on me almost every day. When he saw me for the first time after that, at a book party, he walked straight across the room and gave me a big, long hug. That's how Arthur leads."

Sulzberger sent another signal of his openness just after the paper ran a now notorious piece describing the wild streak of the alleged victim in the Palm Beach rape case. Many reporters, Quindlen says, thought she was nuts to write a column saying that the article was beneath the Times's standards. But, she recalls, "the next time I saw Arthur in the newsroom, he came up to me and, in a loud voice, told me that he was proud that I had spoken out the way I did."

Unlike his father, who had his job thrust upon him at age 37 when his own father was paralyzed by a stroke, Sulzberger has followed a carefully calibrated path to the top. At the tender age of 14, he decided to leave his mother's house and go live with his father. He knows how hard it must have been on his mother, but, he says, "she didn't cry in my presence." He moved uptown to an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment that included his father's second wife Carol, so demanding that she once told the wife of the Paris bureau chief to get the chintz curtains cleaned immediately. An adolescent boy, however well house trained, can seem like an invasion of Visigoths. "It wasn't easy for either of us," Sulzberger says, "but she handled it with great sophistication."

Shortly after that, Sulzberger had his only burst of rebellion, letting his hair grow long, wearing his father's old green Marine jacket on most occasions, and getting himself arrested in peace demonstrations. The second time, Sulzberger recalls, his father flew up to Boston to check up on "where I was, where was I going. His was never a heavy hand."