Adolph Ochs


Today, when America’s news media are under attack for sensationalism, we recall that an American Jew, Adolph Simon Ochs, set the standard for objective, independent and responsible journalism.

Ochs was born in Cincinnati in 1868 to German-Jewish immigrants, Julius and Bertha Levy Ochs. Bertha Ochs had emigrated to Knoxville, Tenn., in 1,848, and when the Civil War started in 1861 she sided with the Confederacy. Julius, on the other hand, chose to serve in the Union army — a conflict that strained but did not divide the household. Thus Adolph’s parents modeled early in his life the importance of sticking to principles, regardless of the discomfort the might cause others.

At age 11, to help the family make ends meet, Adolph left grammar school to become a printer’s assistant at the Knoxville Chronicle, which, in his own words, became "my high school and my university." At the Chronicle, Adolph worked as a reporter, printer and office assistant. At age 19, sensing opportunity in Chattanooga, he moved there to take a job on the Chattanooga Times. When the paper started to fail, Ochs borrowed $250, purchased a controlling interest in the paper and became its publisher, as biographer Elmer Davis observed, "before he was old enough to vote."

It was at the Chattanooga Times that Ochs established the principles that would make him the most influential newspaper editor in American history. Ochs described his paper as "clean, dignified and trustworthy." In an age marked by "yellow" journalism, in which publishers such as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer competed for readers by printing lurid and sometimes distorted accounts of murder and scandal, trying to sell a paper that was "clean, dignified and trustworthy" was risky. By distinguishing between news and editorial opinion, however, Ochs’ Chattanooga Times became one of the South’s most respected and prosperous dailies.

In 1896, Ochs learned of an opportunity to purchase The New York Times, a venerable insti