place. The
Journal
had become a “second read” of a business-minded audience (its first read was the hometown paper, the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, or the
Chicago Tribune
, for local news and sports). In smaller cities, for less demanding readers, the folksy
USA Today
, with its short stories and TV-like color graphics, became a second read.
In one managerial area, though, Punch Sulzberger achieved absolute success. With tenacity, and the help of good lawyers, he guaranteed his family’s control of the
Times
well into the middle of the twenty-first century.
A DAY IN THE LIFE
9:45 A.M. –10:05 A.M.
9:45 A.M.
Half the world away from 43rd Street in the other direction, Bill Keller, the
Times’
bureau chief in Moscow, had a clock that worked to his advantage. Keller could put in a full day of reporting in Moscow, organize his notes, and write his story—and it was still early in the day in New York. He also had an easy commute to work: His apartment at one end of the fortress-like building at 12/24 Sadova Samotechnaya was fifty feet from the second-floor flat that had been converted into the
Times’
offices. Sadova Samotechnaya is one of the ring roads in Moscow, and number 12/24 is part of the foreign journalists’ ghetto in the capital. Several other American newspeople, as well as Japanese and British journalists, lived in the same building. Five minutes away was the U.S. Embassy. Keller, compact and clear-eyed, was born in California in 1949. At Pomona College, he edited the student paper and spent weekends as a backpacker. When a big earthquake cut off Moscow’s communications with Soviet Armenia, Keller alternately hitchhiked and walked along the 160-mile perimeter of the earthquake zone, from the Armenian capital of Yerevan to the hardest-hit towns of Leninakan and Spitak. The morning of Tuesday, February 28, he strolled to his office knowing that the
Times
had just nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize for his earthquake coverage (one month later, on March 30, Keller won his Pulitzer in the international reporting category).
9:50 A.M.
On 43rd Street in front of the
Times
building, two twenty-wheel trucks, numbers 49 and 08, pulled up to the pressroom bays just east of the lobby entrance, toward Broadway. The two trucks, both thirty-three-foot-long trailers pulled by ten-foot cabs, were from the Baldwin Transportation Company, 108 Leggitt Avenue in the Bronx near the Hunts Point railhead, where the trucks offloaded the newsprint rolls the night before. The shipment had come by rail over the weekend from the Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company Limited, Spruce Falls, Canada. The driver of the first truck, Mike Casanova of the Teamsters Union, was delivering order number 73; it consisted of ten newsprint rolls, each weighing one ton and as big around as a kitchen table. The
Times’
two printing plants, one at 43rd Street, the other in Carlstadt,New Jersey, received over eight thousand such rolls that week; in all, some 400,000 tons of newsprint was budgeted to publish the
Times
of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In Boston, his pile of newspapers read, Tony Lewis had his idea for his column for the edition of March 2. The Congressional opponents of the John Tower nomination, Lewis thought, were using dangerous tactics in relying on untested charges from an FBI report.
10:00 A.M.
The editors and reporters who worked on the twenty-odd departmental desks responsible for the
Times’
daily news report arrived in the New York newsroom and offices: the main dayshift of 450 men and women. In Washington, Michael Oreskes was among the first of the thirty-five men and women who worked in the bureau to appear at the
Times’
offices on I Street. The offices, located in the former Army-Navy Building, were elegantly appointed, with modern work stations, economically designed—as the more sardonic
Times
bureau people told it—to maximize the computer-human interface. Only the rolltop desk of James Reston, the longtime bureau
Journal
had become a “second read” of a business-minded audience (its first read was the hometown paper, the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, or the
Chicago Tribune
, for local news and sports). In smaller cities, for less demanding readers, the folksy
USA Today
, with its short stories and TV-like color graphics, became a second read.
In one managerial area, though, Punch Sulzberger achieved absolute success. With tenacity, and the help of good lawyers, he guaranteed his family’s control of the
Times
well into the middle of the twenty-first century.
A DAY IN THE LIFE
9:45 A.M. –10:05 A.M.
9:45 A.M.
Half the world away from 43rd Street in the other direction, Bill Keller, the
Times’
bureau chief in Moscow, had a clock that worked to his advantage. Keller could put in a full day of reporting in Moscow, organize his notes, and write his story—and it was still early in the day in New York. He also had an easy commute to work: His apartment at one end of the fortress-like building at 12/24 Sadova Samotechnaya was fifty feet from the second-floor flat that had been converted into the
Times’
offices. Sadova Samotechnaya is one of the ring roads in Moscow, and number 12/24 is part of the foreign journalists’ ghetto in the capital. Several other American newspeople, as well as Japanese and British journalists, lived in the same building. Five minutes away was the U.S. Embassy. Keller, compact and clear-eyed, was born in California in 1949. At Pomona College, he edited the student paper and spent weekends as a backpacker. When a big earthquake cut off Moscow’s communications with Soviet Armenia, Keller alternately hitchhiked and walked along the 160-mile perimeter of the earthquake zone, from the Armenian capital of Yerevan to the hardest-hit towns of Leninakan and Spitak. The morning of Tuesday, February 28, he strolled to his office knowing that the
Times
had just nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize for his earthquake coverage (one month later, on March 30, Keller won his Pulitzer in the international reporting category).
9:50 A.M.
On 43rd Street in front of the
Times
building, two twenty-wheel trucks, numbers 49 and 08, pulled up to the pressroom bays just east of the lobby entrance, toward Broadway. The two trucks, both thirty-three-foot-long trailers pulled by ten-foot cabs, were from the Baldwin Transportation Company, 108 Leggitt Avenue in the Bronx near the Hunts Point railhead, where the trucks offloaded the newsprint rolls the night before. The shipment had come by rail over the weekend from the Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company Limited, Spruce Falls, Canada. The driver of the first truck, Mike Casanova of the Teamsters Union, was delivering order number 73; it consisted of ten newsprint rolls, each weighing one ton and as big around as a kitchen table. The
Times’
two printing plants, one at 43rd Street, the other in Carlstadt,New Jersey, received over eight thousand such rolls that week; in all, some 400,000 tons of newsprint was budgeted to publish the
Times
of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In Boston, his pile of newspapers read, Tony Lewis had his idea for his column for the edition of March 2. The Congressional opponents of the John Tower nomination, Lewis thought, were using dangerous tactics in relying on untested charges from an FBI report.
10:00 A.M.
The editors and reporters who worked on the twenty-odd departmental desks responsible for the
Times’
daily news report arrived in the New York newsroom and offices: the main dayshift of 450 men and women. In Washington, Michael Oreskes was among the first of the thirty-five men and women who worked in the bureau to appear at the
Times’
offices on I Street. The offices, located in the former Army-Navy Building, were elegantly appointed, with modern work stations, economically designed—as the more sardonic
Times
bureau people told it—to maximize the computer-human interface. Only the rolltop desk of James Reston, the longtime bureau
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