NEW YORK -- Former New York Times Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal, who is credited with revamping the newspaper and broadening its readership, ended a 55-year association with the paper on Friday.
Rosenthal's final op-ed column, which ran under the headline: "Please Read This Column," was published Friday. Rosenthal, 77, used the same headline for his first column on Jan. 6, 1987, and thought it a fitting way to end, although he said he planned to continue writing.The Times announced Rosenthal's departure Thursday but a statement by Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. did not say why he was leaving. The Washington Post reported Friday that Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the Times in 1960 for his reporting from Communist Poland, was fired.
"Sweetheart, you can use any word you want," Rosenthal told Post media critic Howard Kurtz.
Repeated messages left for Rosenthal at the newspaper and his home were not returned.
Rosenthal told the Post that Sulzberger gave him the news, saying only that "'it was time.' What that means, I don't know. ... I didn't expect it at all."
"I've had a long time here," Rosenthal told the New York Post. "I love the Times. I'm not happy. But I'm not bitter either."
His departure comes just days before publication of a Vanity Fair article that describes a long-simmering feud between Rosenthal and his successor, Max Frankel, who stepped down as executive editor in 1994.
The article, written by former Times law reporter David Margolick, includes many barbed and candid remarks by Rosenthal about Frankel. Others quoted in the article, a copy of which was released to The Associated Press, believe Rosenthal was getting even with Frankel for cutting remarks made about him in Frankel's book, "The Times of My Life and My Life with the Times."
"I think he's left little of significance at the Times," Rosenthal told Vanity Fair.
Frankel's comments on Rosenthal and Rosenthal's return fire in the December issue of the magazine breaks a long-held Times canon that one does not trash one's own.
Nancy Nielsen, a spokeswoman for the newspaper, said Rosenthal's departure had nothing to do with the Vanity Fair article. "Not at all," Nielsen said, "No, no, no, no, no."
"Mr. Rosenthal was 77 and so it was his time to think about new things, as Abe himself put it," Nielsen said.
Rosenthal's final column recalled his career at the newspaper, from a college stringer in the 1943, to his Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of Communist Poland in 1960 and his final assignment as a columnist getting "paid to express my own opinions."
Sulzberger released a statement, saying, "As a reporter, editor and columnist, Abe has been a major force at The New York Times for half a century. In each of these roles he has excelled."
The Times also noted Rosenthal's departure in an editorial Friday, saying, "his devotion to quality journalism made him one of the principal architects of the modern New York Times."
During his tenure as the Times' top editor, which ended at the end of 1986 as he approached the newspaper's mandatory retirement age, Rosenthal is credited with revamping the newspaper to a four-section daily with a separate business section and specialty sections for science, sports and weekend features. He was also credited with being the editor who argued that the Pentagon Papers should be published.
During his five decades at the Times, Rosenthal also served as managing editor, associate managing editor, assistant managing editor, United Nations correspondent and police reporter.