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page, *10 a section in the paper in which
Times
columnists and outside writers would have a venue to make their voices heard. Today, daily newspapers around the country almost universally include both those specialty sections and an Op-Ed page.
    Punch made another lasting contribution to the culture of the
Times
by creating the post of executive editor. It was a job his father, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, had liked to perform himself, but Punch had neither the inclination nor the temperament to resolve editorial disputes or make snap news judgments. Like Orvil Dryfoos before him, Punch wanted to find a way to unite the Sunday and daily papers, thereby replacing the existing system in which news decisions on Mondays through Saturdays were made by the
Times
’s managing editor but on the seventh day by Lester Markel, the increasingly intractable Sunday editor. In 1964, Punch appointed managing editor Turner Catledge to the newly created executive-editor position. In 1967, when Catledge retired, James “Scotty” Reston, the paper’s longtime Washington bureau chief and columnist, took over on a temporary basis. From 1969 to 1976, the post remained unfilled: A. M. Rosenthal was the paper’s managing editor *11 but was deemed unready to rise to the top spot. In 1976, Rosenthal finally assumed the role and served until 1986, when Max Frankel was installed; he in turn remained until Joe Lelyveld took over in 1994.
    Catledge, Rosenthal, and Frankel all had close personal relationships with Punch, and all three men were careful to court the publisher’s affections. They were given great authority but always were expected to remember that it was the Sulzbergers, and not any individual editor, who made
The New York Times
special. In turn, the executive editors were treated as more than simply the editorial stewards of the newspaper: Punch consulted with them about strategic decisions involving the
Times
’s future and relied upon them to help steer the company.
    While Punch was a forceful leader, he was not an overbearing one.
    He preferred to operate behind the scenes and only rarely exercised his prerogative to overrule the paper’s editorial-page editor. *12 (More commonly, he voiced disagreement by writing letters to the paper, which he signed A. Sock, a play on his nickname.) *13 “Unpretentiousness is his greatest gift,” said Max Frankel, who served as editorial-page editor and was the executive editor when Punch stepped down as publisher. “He was remarkably serene about letting his subordinates do their work. His interventions were extremely polite.”
    In 1971, in what would become one of the defining moments of his career—and a defining moment for American journalism—Punch authorized the
Times
’s publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of the Vietnam War. After the paper’s outside law firm, Lord, Day & Lord, said it wouldn’t defend the
Times
if it published the report, Punch retained new lawyers. The
Times
’s decision to publish, and the Nixon administration’s efforts to halt that publication, led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling that upheld the right of a newspaper to publish free of government’s “prior restraint.”
    —————
    B Y THE EARLY 1990 S, Punch, who would turn seventy in 1996, began preparations to cede his title to the next generation of the family. His only son, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., was the obvious leading candidate, although Michael Golden, the second son of Punch’s sister Ruth, was also ambitious and active in the company. Arthur Sulzberger had undergone an apprenticeship that went far beyond that of any of the previous publishers at the paper—he had served as a reporter and editor, worked in the paper’s ad department, done nights in the production department, and helped his father as the assistant and deputy publisher. Punch had known he wanted his son to succeed him since the mid-1980s, and in 1986, when he appointed Max Frankel executive