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had held all three titles; first Walter Mattson and then Primis had essentially served as CEOs, which had helped assuage the business community’s fears about Punch’s managerial bona fides. Sulzberger hired Russ Lewis, who had started his career at the
Times
as a copyboy before working in the legal department, as head of the circulation and production departments and as the president of the
Times.
    On the afternoon Punch passed the torch to his son, he was feted in an impromptu newsroom ceremony. Joseph Lelyveld, the paper’s executive editor, noted that three things made that day, October 16, 1997, a landmark one. For the first time in its history, the
Times
had run color photos on its front page. Second, at 138 pages, that edition of the paper was the largest daily
Times
in history. And third, the paper had its first chairman emeritus.
    Punch, from the sidelines, chimed in. “There are four things,” he said. “The stock is at an all-time high.” It was intended as a lighthearted comment, but it also hinted at the intense pressure on the company to prove to the business world that continued family ownership would result not only in a superior product but in sizable profits as well. Arthur Sulzberger Jr. made it clear that he too understood those pressures. “The most important partnership in this institution is the relationship between the family and the non-family management,” he said in an interview that day. His ascension, he said, and the promotion of Russ Lewis to the chief executive’s office, “continue on a corporate level the partnership that allows this institution to survive.”
    “This place doesn’t run like a family fiefdom,” says Lewis. “It’s got the best of both worlds: the constancy of purpose that Arthur and the family have given it for over a hundred years, and the accountability of a public company.”
    The day after Punch stepped down, the
Times
’s two-thousand-word, front-page account of the passing of the generational torch made note of Sulzberger’s unique place in American journalism. “His action,”
Times
reporter Clyde Haberman wrote of Punch’s decision to name his son chairman of the Times Company, “affirmed that in a troubled age for American newspapers, when many of them worry about their future and are increasingly governed by distant corporate boards, control of The Times would remain with the Sulzberger family, the paper’s guiding force for 101 years.”
     
    T HE P RINCE
    If the Sulzbergers are, as some writers have noted, the closest thing America has to a royal family (when Prince Charles visited the country in 1988, he invited Arthur, along with Don Graham, the heir to
The Washington Post,
to dinner because he thought they’d best understand his position), then Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. is its crown prince and one who has endured a lifetime of royal-level scrutiny. He’s rarely addressed it publicly, but Sulzberger finds the examination of every aspect of his life intrusive. The few times he’s spoken of the microscope under which he often finds himself, he’s made his annoyance clear. Take one incident in 2000, when Sulzberger visited Harvard to speak at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. The center is run by Alex Jones, who, in addition to co-authoring
The Trust,
wrote about the media for the
Times
from 1983 to 1992 and won a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.
    At the beginning of the talk, Sulzberger made a reference to his alma mater. “By the way, if you want a more full account of my days at Tufts, you can consult a book,
The Trust,
which was co-authored by our host, Alex Jones,” he said, and then added dryly, “I do, however, wonder why anyone—other than my wife and children, perhaps my father—would have any interest in such an incredibly dull topic.” This remark, a message of frustration cloaked in the guise of a quip, was typical of Sulzberger, who often tries for humor, only to sound either