Journalism lost a giant figure when Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the longtime publisher of The New York Times, died on Saturday at age 86. Taking over in 1963, Mr. Sulzberger, known as Punch, transformed the newspaper, guiding it through pressing financial troubles, making it national in scope and recasting it with new sections and a new design. His bold decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971 in the face of intense pressure from the government is regarded as a defining moment for the freedom of the press.
- Writing in The Times Monday, Max Frankel, a former editorial page editor and executive editor at the paper, said “Punch's most celebrated decisions look easy only in retrospect.†The New Yorker wrote on its Web site that “the story of his family, of the paper, and of American journalism - and, more broadly, of press freedom in this country - are all inextricably tied together.''
Accordin g to Representative Paul D. Ryan, “it goes without saying'' that there is a liberal bias in the mainstream news media that causes it to favor President Obama over Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate. But Mr. Ryan said it anyway. In response to a question from Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Romney's running mate, touched on a subject that has been high on the list of talking points among conservatives lately, asserting that “most people in the mainstream media are left of center and therefore, they want a very left of center president more than they want a conservative president like Mitt Romney.''
- In his Media Equation column in the The Times Monday, David Carr took issue with that premise, writing that conservatives have powerful media megaphones like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and The Wall Street Journal editorial page. Mr. Carr noted that Mr. Romney himself, as well as his staff, has said that it's not useful to blame the media, a point echoed Sunday by Gov. Chris Christie, Republican of New Jersey, who said “I'm not going to sit here and complain about coverage of the campaign. As a candidate, if you do that, you're losing.''
Gannett, which owns USA Today and 80 other newspapers in the United States, is acutely aware of the financial problems facing the industry, and those problems have led to an overhaul of many of their papers. The people of Burlington, Vt., aren't happy about it, Christine Haughney reports, saying that changes to the 185-year-old Free Press have led some readers to give up on the paper or switch to a free alternative weekly. The reaction in Burlington reflects the broader challenges facing Gannett, which owns The Free Press, and other newspaper chains as they try to retool local papers for the digital age.
Theodore A. Scott was elated when he won a “take a year off'' contest sponsored by Gold Peak Tea that would allow him to stop working for one year. But the euphoria lasted only a few days. He was disqualified for using an online contest forum where he encouraged people to vote for him and is fighting the ruling. Tanzina Vega writes that the development is just the latest example of a company trying “to create excitement for its brand on social media only to find that sentiment can quickly turn.''
For years, big technology companies have complained about a dearth of technical talent, and now Microsoft is sending its employees into the schools to help address the problem. The company is encouraging workers to commit to teaching a high school computer science class for a full school year, Nick Wingfield writes, paying them a small stipend and allowing them flexible hours to pave the way.
Julie Bosman reports on a new wave of serialized fiction for e-books, with one new effort starting today: a novel called “The Silent History†that takes things a step further by offering interactive, user-generated elements.< /p>
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