by Gay Talese
The speeches that Daniel makes around the country, usually concerning the role of a free press, are intoned in his style of cool elegance, and are followed by questions from the audience. People are very curious about The Times, and many of them get from hearing and seeing Daniel a confirmation of their own ideas about the paper, its calm posture and pride in appearance, the respect for its tradition and the certainty of its virtue. They get from Daniel the image the institution has of itself, which is not necessarily all the reality beneath the surface. For there are other sides to The Times, other speeches made by Timesmen gathered at a Forty-third Street bar, or Timesmen talking to themselves in bed at night that reveal the frustration in working for a place so large, so solvent and sure—a fact factory where the workers realize the too-apparent truth: they are replaceable. The paper can get along without any of them. The executives like to deny it, and nobody likes to talk about it, but it is true. And this truth evokes both sadness and bitterness in many who deeply love the paper, who have romanticized and personalized it, thought of it as some great gray goddess with whom they were having an affair—forgetting that no matter who they are, nor how well they have performed, they will soon be too old for her. She is ageless and they must yield to newer, younger men.
Sometimes they are replaced as casually as light bulbs in a great movie marquee—changed automatically, though luminous as ever, once they reach a certain age; and this act was not going unnoticed by Timesmen still on the scene. During the mid-Sixties they lamented the automatic retirement, while still in fine health, of Brooks Atkinson, the theater critic, and William L. (“Atomic Bill”) Laurence, the science writer; and the baseball writer, John Drebinger, who at his farewell party announced, trying to seem cheerful after a few drinks, “Well, if I’d known retirement was so great, I’d have done it long ago,” to which an executive responded, coolly, “Well, then, why did you give us so much trouble, John?”
Automation, together with the process of depersonalization, was a complex problem shared by big businesses around the nation, and yet at The Times there was a lingering notion that The Times was not a business, but a calling, and expressions of mockery greeted the half-dozen machines that were rolled into the newsroom before election night to do what the late Leo Egan and Jim Hagerty, Sr., used to do so well, predict the outcome; and there was contempt among the workers in the composing room for the technological gadgets that did everything better than men—except strike. There was irreverence in the newsroom for those items promoting communication without contact—the memos, the silver microphone; and there was perhaps also a realization among the top executives that The New York Times, which had long taken pride in being “in touch,” had now become so large that it did not really know what was going on under its own roof. Thus it was that Punch Sulzberger, reaffirming his faith in new techniques while striving to preserve something of the old Times spirit, announced that a team of trained psychologists would be engaged by The Times to interview a “scientifically selected random sample” of Times employees in an effort “to determine how, in this large and varied organization, it can establish greater rapport with the men and women who work for it.”
This move was considered absurd by some editors, while others, including Clifton Daniel, wondered what impact the employees’ complaints against such men as himself might have with the publisher. Daniel did not know exactly where he stood with Punch Sulzberger, or, for that matter, with the Sulzberger family. Daniel had been Catledge’s choice as the managing editor during the great shuffle in 1964, following Dryfoos’ untimely death. Sulzberger had endorsed Catledge’s nomination of Daniel as the managing editor, but Sulzberger’s concurrence did not necessarily signify personal approval of Daniel—nor was Daniel’s formal British manner likely to charm the informal young publisher, it being in fact reminiscent of the stiff Tory tutors who had once horrified Sulzberger as a schoolboy at St. Bernard’s. Further, there was the personality of Daniel’s wife. Ten years of marriage, the birth of four children, and her husband’s position on The Times had in no way diminished Margaret Truman Daniel’s singular concept of herself as an American princess, and she was not the sort who would ever indulge in small corporate games as a Timesman’s wife—paying court to the Sulzbergers, ingratiating herself with Ochsian heiresses, or tempering her strong opinions when in the company of those gently spoken women. Daniel, to be sure, was a model of correctness with everyone—with his employers as with his wife. He had sought to impress Iphigene Sulzberger with his attentiveness and courtesy, and hoped that he had. Recently he had begun a speech with her favorite anecdote about The Times being the product of “cathedral builders, not stonecutters.” But Daniel could not really know what the family thought of him privately, having never gotten close enough socially to perceive his status, and he had so far been unable to establish a direct working relationship with the publisher because Catledge was in the way. This was no doubt the most unfortunate aspect of Daniel’s managing-editorship—his benefactor, Catledge, after vacating the managing editor’s office, had not retired or severed his connections with the News department. Instead, while occupying a new third-floor office unseen from the newsroom, and acquiring the vague new title of “executive editor,” Catledge had proceeded to pull the strings from behind Clifton Daniel. Catledge could do this because he—and he alone—had the friendship, the confidence, and the ear of the young publisher. In addition, Catledge’s and Sulzberger’s wives had become fast friends, and the couples had solidified their relationship by spending weekends together out of the city, and by taking trips together to Europe.
There were times when Daniel felt that Catledge was sufficiently satisfied with the way things were going, or was sufficiently uninterested, to allow Daniel free rein. During such periods Daniel felt a pleasant identity with the photographs of the men on the wall—Van Anda and Birchall, James and Catledge. He felt confidence in himself as an executive, satisfaction in the reporters or critics whom he had hired, reassurance in the style in which The Times was covering the world. While Daniel often gave the impression of vaingloriousness and was unquestionably proud of his title, he also saw himself as an instrument of the institution, a good soldier, a loyal subject, and there was not a man in the building who was less likely to betray a corporate secret than Clifton Daniel. Catledge had recognized this quality of organizational loyalty in Daniel many years ago. He had seen it in Daniel’s performance as the number two man in the London bureau, had observed it at closer range during the years that Daniel had been a subordinate editor in the newsroom, after his return from Moscow, and in 1964 it had influenced Catledge’s nomination of Daniel as his successor—although the promotion was of questionable significance as long as Catledge continued to hover in the background. Ostensibly, Catledge’s presence was essential to The Times during this transitional period caused by Dryfoos’ death—the inexperienced Sulzberger preferred an old trusted adviser like Catledge to be close at hand—but Daniel did not know how long the sixty-five-year-old Catledge would remain, nor what would happen after Catledge had retired. Perhaps the title of “excutive editor” would be retired with him and “managing editor” would again be preeminent on the third floor. Or perhaps Daniel would become the executive editor. Or there was always the grim possibility that another individual closer to Sulzberger would be moved in over Daniel. Daniel could only hope that this would not happen. During his twenty-two years on The Times, Daniel had played by the rules, had never stepped out of line or gone over Catledge’s head. He had sulked on occasion, as in 1953 when hearing that Drew Middleton had been appointed the London bureau chief instead of himself, but Daniel had submitted finally to the wishes of The Times. He had conceded that The Times’ purpose was more important than an individual’s preference—he liked to think of The Times as functioning somewhat along the lines of the English monarchy: despite its variety of weak or great rulers, the monarchy had perpetuated itself from century to century, maintaining its formality and tradition and i
ts predictable line of succession.
As a Timesman, Daniel had respected this system. It had brought him compensation and an identity with greatness, and it would hopefully continue to do so unless the system was abruptly altered by the young publisher. This prospect had not concerned Daniel during Sulzberger’s first two years at the top—Sulzberger had then seemed to be gently and effectively guided by Turner Catledge. But during the late summer of 1966, and into the fall and winter, things had occurred within the organization that had made Daniel wonder. Decisions that had seemed imminent were suddenly changed; there seemed to be a subtle shifting of attitude, of pondering and postponing from Catledge’s back office. It was as if Catledge’s regentship was now being counterbalanced by the weight of an emerging figure from above.
The plan to hire a team of psychologists under the auspices of an independent research firm—Daniel Yankelovich, Inc., of 575 Madison Avenue—to sample the thinking of Times employees seemed rather injudicious. Not only was it an open admission that all was not well within, but it seemed contrary to Times policy to permit outsiders to probe into the paper’s internal affairs, and it also suggested a lack of confidence in the paper’s own editors to analyze the situation and deal with it. There were other things, too, that had begun to concern Daniel. There was the continuing prospect that his chief aide, Harrison Salisbury, might be transferred out of the News department. And there was the unexpected survival of Tom Wicker as the Washington bureau chief after Wicker had been told by Catledge during the summer that he would have to relinquish the bureau if he wanted to take over Arthur Krock’s column upon Krock’s retirement, at the age of seventy-eight, on October 1, 1966. Wicker had agreed, saying that if forced to choose between running the bureau and writing the column, he would take the column. But then somehow, after becoming a columnist, Wicker had also managed to hold onto his title as bureau chief.
But what had most directly and personally perturbed Clifton Daniel during the late summer of 1966 was the abrupt dismissal, on orders relayed by Catledge, of the theater critic, Stanley Kauffmann, whom Daniel had hired eight months before and whose work he admired. Kauffmann had come to The Times from the New Republic, where he had been the film critic, but he had also had a background in the theater: he had been trained for the theater through four years of college, had spent ten years in a repertory company devoted to classics, had written and published plays, had directed in summer theaters and elsewhere, and between 1963 and 1966 he had been the drama critic of the educational television station in New York, Channel 13. Before being hired, Kauffmann had been invited by Daniel and Salisbury to the Times building for conversations about the so-called “cultural explosion” in America, the affluent society’s fling with the arts, and how The Times had responded to this by forming, in 1962, a Cultural-News department with a staff of forty to examine, report, and appraise the cultural scene. It had worked out quite well, Daniel and Salisbury conceded, but they were not entirely satisfied with some of their critics’ intellectual capacity or writing style, which was too often couched in generalities and glib journalese. When they sought Kauffmann’s own opinion of The Times’ cultural coverage, he said frankly that it seemed like a “cultural dump,” adding that it was also the opinion of the intellectual community, as he knew it, that The Times’ critics were held in very low esteem. He excepted The Times’ critic on architecture, Ada Louise Huxtable; its dance critic, Clive Barnes; and one of its art critics, Hilton Kramer.
Kauffmann could not have made three more appropriate exceptions when condemning the critics—Daniel and Salisbury were also admirers of the work of Mrs. Huxtable, and they had been active in the hiring of Hilton Kramer and Clive Barnes. In the case of Kramer, whose criticism had appeared in The New Leader, Commentary, and The New York Review of Books, Harrison Salisbury had seemed more knowledgeable than Daniel about Kramer’s work—although before Kramer had been hired officially, he had talked not only with Daniel and Salisbury, but also with Emanuel R. Freedman, an assistant managing editor; Joseph G. Herzberg, the cultural-news director; Seymour Peck, the editor of the arts and leisure section; Daniel Schwarz, the Sunday editor; and Turner Catledge. Clive Barnes had gone through pretty much the same ritual, although his employment by The Times had been entirely Daniel’s idea. Daniel, who had become an appreciator of ballet during his years in London and his friendship with Dame Margot Fonteyn—about whom he wrote his final Magazine piece in 1956 before settling down as a Times editor—had read and enjoyed Clive Barnes’s dance reviews in the London Times and the Daily Express, and thus began a series of transoceanic phone calls from Daniel to Barnes that led, in 1965, to Barnes’s leaving London to join The New York Times.
After Daniel’s and Salisbury’s consultations with Kauffmann, and after Kauffmann had made the rounds and made his recommendations on how The Times might improve its cultural coverage, he was offered the position of drama critic, replacing Howard Taubman, a former music critic who had succeeded Brooks Atkinson in the drama chair after the latter had begun writing a critic-at-large column. But with Atkinson’s retirement, Howard Taubman was assigned to write critic-at-large pieces on cultural affairs, although not as a regular columnist, and Kauffmann was to move into Taubman’s spot. It was agreed that Kauffmann would have the job for a minimum of a year and a half, but as one executive put it, the hope was that “this will be for life.”
Kauffmann’s career as a Timesman had begun on January 1, 1966, and except for minor complaints about his polysyllabicisms and elliptical references, he had received only praise from the editors. But as one who took his critic’s job very seriously, perhaps too seriously, Kauffmann was soon making enemies among a number of Broadway producers, performers, and backers. In several letters to the publisher’s office, and in visits to certain of the publisher’s representatives, they complained that Kauffmann did not seem to like anything, and there was the indication that even when he did, he could not write a selling review. Although this was not really true, a few Times executives privately felt that Kauffmann was a bit too ponderous and professorial about the theater: he seemed mainly interested in analyzing the play, examining its weaknesses and strengths, and did not create sufficient excitement in his reviews, a sense of anticipation and pleasure that many ticket buyers associate with the theater.
In fairness to Kauffmann, he had problems that no other critic had on The Times, that of being second-guessed behind his back by numbers of Times executives who regularly attend Broadway shows, who socialize with producers and investors in Sardi’s and around New York, who have an emotional interest in, and a conviction about, the theater that they do not have about films or ballet, art, television, or architecture. Kauffmann was also unfortunate in joining The Times during its transitional period when no editor knew precisely which way the new publisher and the top executives were leaning, and there was also the problem of the power inherent in the drama job itself. Unlike the movie critic, whose influence on the box office is mitigated by the fact that a film may be opening in fifty different cities simultaneously, the theater critic’s comments are directed at one stage in New York, and bombardment by The Times can possibly destroy a play’s chances of survival on Broadway as well as its touring opportunities elsewhere—unless the production is endowed with a large advance sale, or a superstar with great appeal, or with several fine reviews in other publications, particularly from Walter Kerr in the Herald Tribune and from the news magazines and The New Yorker. After the departure of Brooks Atkinson, whose eminence and seniority as a drama critic had made him invulnerable to countercriticism from Times editors or Broadway people, The Times’ top executives had thought of Kenneth Tynan as a replacement, having respected his judgment and literary style in The New Yorker, and seeing him as a kind of witty, skillful surgeon who could cut without killing. The drama job on The Times, the executives generally agreed, was potentially a blunt and dangerous instrument in improper hands—The Times was fearful of the power invested in that one employee, and it w
as felt that Tynan might concurrently fulfill the need of serious criticism, responsibility to the theater, and entertainment to Times readers. But Tynan himself admitted that he could not produce his kind of review in the little more than one hour that was available to a critic on a morning newspaper; and Tynan was also anxious to be getting back to London.
When Stanley Kauffmann had been approached by The Times, he had raised the same point—there simply was not sufficient time between the end of the play and the paper’s deadline to write a considered review, and as a result of this discussion, Clifton Daniel had arranged for Kauffmann to attend plays during their final preview before opening night—the assumption being that if a play was not then in shape it could not be significantly improved within twenty-four hours, and it would also permit the critic to give more time and thought to the words that carried such weight with ticket buyers. Daniel had hoped that the critics on other newspapers would follow this practice, but they did not, and one reviewer described The Times’ plan as a confession of Kauffmann’s journalistic inability to meet a deadline. When Kauffmann’s reviews began to appear, the producers mounted their protest; but at first neither Catledge, Sulzberger, nor anyone else on the paper seemed unduly concerned. Times executives are accustomed to a certain amount of criticism of their critics: Howard Taubman had been condemned regularly around Sardi’s as a weak replacement for Brooks Atkinson; and even Atkinson had been denounced by producers on many occasions, and one of his predecessors, Alexander Woollcott, had even been barred from a theater after an unfavorable review. This had occurred in 1915 after Woollcott had described a particular Shubert brothers’ comedy as “not vastly amusing” and “quite tedious”; and the Shuberts had retaliated by sending a set of tickets to their next production to Carr Van Anda, with a note suggesting that The Times assign another critic to review it, adding that if Woollcott presented the tickets they would not be honored. When Adolph Ochs learned of this, he instructed Woollcott to buy his own ticket. Woollcott did, but when he arrived at the theater door he was blocked by a doorman and Jacob Shubert himself.