The Life and <em>Times</em> of Joseph Lelyveld
Joe Lelyveld, who died earlier this month at the age of 86, was the last great print editor of The New York Times, a steward and symbol of a passing era. He presided over the newsroom during a period when the Times, like almost all newspapers, defined its journalism by what rolled off the presses every night. And he was there for the beginning of momentous upheaval for the Times and for American journalism, with the rise of the internet.
Lelyveld bowed, albeit with more than a little skepticism and reluctance, to the first stirrings of the digital revolution that was championed by a young and forward-looking publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. And he navigated, with discomfort, the way this untethered era forced a reconsideration of journalistic standards, evident in the rise of the and the often unrestrained coverage of the exploits of figures such as Michael Jackson and the Kardashians. Lelyveld understood intuitively that these two forces shaping American newspapers were related: that digital was more than a means of delivery, that the immediacy of the format—the speed with which news would now have to be gathered, written, edited, and published—would change the substance and, potentially, the accuracy of reporting. He had the was forced to run after an uproar about a digital headline, posted in the early hours of a fast-moving story, that blamed Israel for bombing a Gaza City hospital.)
