'Vanity Fair' Profiles NYT's Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

If Ken Auletta's December 2005 New Yorker profile of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was what persuaded the New York Times publisher not to cooperate with any more reporters for awhile, then there's scant chance Mark Bowden's 11,000-word Vanity Fair portrait will change his mind.

Sulzberger declined to talk to Bowden, and told Times employees to do the same. Nevertheless, Bowden writes, "I interviewed dozens of current and former Times reporters, editors, and business managers, as well as industry analysts, academics, and editors and publishers at rival newspapers. Nearly every one of them hopes that Arthur will succeed. Few expect that he can."

Ouch. Lots more where that came from, too. Although Bowden says plenty of nice things about Sulzberger -- including calling him "every journalist's dream publisher" -- on balance, he concludes that he's not up to the task of piloting the Times through the current crisis.

"He is a careful steward, when what the Times needs today is some wild-eyed genius of an entrepreneur," he writes. "[P]recisely because he is who he is, Arthur may be the last person in the world with the answers. The more likely outcome is that he will lose the Times to someone with deep enough pockets to carry the enterprise at a loss until circumstances sort themselves out -- a rich individual, or a rich corporation, or some rich philanthropic institution." Bowden, who wrote about Rupert Murdoch's takeover of The Wall Street Journal in The Atlantic just last year, seems to think there's a good chance Murdoch will end up with the Times, too.

Tidbits:

-On Sulzberger the man:

He is long-winded and, in keeping with a tendency toward affectation, is fussily articulate, like a bright freshman eager to impress, speaking in complex, carefully enunciated sentences sprinkled with expressions ordinarily found only on the page, such as "that is" and "i.e." and "in large measure," or archaisms like "to a fare-thee-well." He exaggerates. He works hard, endearingly, to put others at ease, even with those who in his presence are not even slightly intimidated or uncomfortable. His witticisms are hit-and-miss, and can be awkward and inadvertently revealing.

- One of his pet expressions is "W.S.L.," an abbreviation meaning "We Suck Less." Sulzberger deploys it "as a reminder to those in the know that, for all its travails and failings, his newspaper remains, after all, The New York Times."

- Sulzberger, the fifth in his family line to serve as publisher of the Times, might never have ended up claiming his birthright had he not, at age 14, made a seemingly cold-blooded choice to align himself with his father after his parents divorced:

[U]nderstanding what his famous name meant, and who his distant father actually was in the world, he packed up his things and moved himself the half-mile to his father's home on Fifth Avenue, to live with Punch and his stepmother and their daughters. He was not pulled by any strong emotional connection. It seemed more like a career move. His biological father and his stepmother were wealthy, socially connected, and powerful; his biological mother and his stepfather were not. Arthur opted for privilege and opportunity.