I’ve been reading Gay Talese’s The Kingdom and the Power the past few months. It’s about the rise of The New York Times and all the big names that made it into the institution it was when Talese wrote the book in the 1960s. I’m up to the part where Orvil Dryfoos, the third publisher of the Times, unexpectedly dies of a heart ailment only a couple years into his job as the head man, leading to a scramble for new leadership. The ultimate choice is Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, the grandson of Adolph Ochs, the man who bought the failing Times in 1896 and set it on course to become the prestigious institution it is today.
Sulzberger was only thirty-seven when he became the shot-caller for the Times. Talese talks about Sulzerberger’s life up to that point, a child who grew up as the “prince” of the Times kingdom and one part that struck me was the way Talese writes about Sulzberger and his stinit as a journalist:
He was now twenty-six, considerably more mature and poised, well liked around the newsroom, eager to learn about journalism. And he would learn a good deal during the next few years, but he would never become a top reporter, lacking qualities that are essential and rarely cultivated by such men as himself, the properly reared sons of the rich. Prying into other people’s affairs, chasing after information, waiting outside the doors of private meetings for official statements is no life for the scion of a newspaper-owning family. It is undignified, too alien to a refined upbringing. The son of a newspaper owner may indulge in reporting for a while, regarding it as part of his management training, a brief fling with romanticism, but he is not naturally drawn to it.
Upon reading this paragraph, my initial thought was about Talese and his own background as a son of an Italian immigrant tailor from New Jersey. I sensed a bit of disdain for the rich and privileged, especially since Talese himself had toiled as a reporter. And then he lays it all out in the next paragraph:
The reportorial ranks are dominated by men from the lower middle class. It is they who possess the drive, patience, and persistence to succeed as reporters; to them reporting is a vehicle to a better life. In one generation, if their by-lines become well known, they may rise from the simplicity and obscurity of their childhood existence to the inner circles of the exclusive. They may gain influence with the President, friendship with the Rockefellers, a front-row seat in the arenas of social and political power. From these positions they might not only witness, but influence, the events of their times — as did Reston, the son of poor Scottish immigrants; as did Krock and Catledge, Daniel and Wicker, the sons of the rural South; as did A. M. Rosenthal and dozens of other Jewish Americans whose forebears escaped the ghettos of Europe.
Basically, if you’re going to be a successful reporter, you need hustle. And hustle, Talese implies, doesn’t come naturally to those who have been fed with a silver spoon all their lives. Reminded me a bit of a recent Mad Men episode when Connie Hilton tells Don Draper that he’s like a son, or more so, because Don grew up without the riches, privilege and a sense of entitlement — a connection that he shares with Hilton.
Filed under: Nonfiction
