Mutiny on the Times

Working on an assignment and out of touch with the office all afternoon, a New York Times man walked back into his city room at 5 p.m. one day last week to find the place filled with excitement and clusters of buzzing reporters. "I thought that maybe the President had been shot or that somebody had declared war on us," he said later. "But it was just that bureau thing."

That "bureau thing" was, in one sense, only another office battle about careers and advancement. But it also had far wider implications about how the Times is run and by whom. The paper has more editorial direction than most of the nation's dailies. Even so, it often appears to be a kind of symposium of independent correspondents. The Times's trio of top editors--Turner Catledge, Clifton Daniel and A. M. Rosenthal--have long wanted to assert more authority and central purpose, notably in regard to the Washington bureau.

Under Arthur Krock and James Reston, the Times's outpost in the capital grew into an independent fiefdom, often brilliant but sometimes slack and slow compared with less lofty competitors. Complaints along these lines from New York headquarters were brushed aside almost as a matter of principle. In 1964, Reston acquired the pulpit of a full-time pundit, and was replaced as bureau chief by Tom Wicker, a top reporter, occasional columnist and indifferent administrator.

The New York national desk began editing or rewriting Washington bureau stories, and two years ago New York tried to replace Wicker with Assistant Managing Editor Harrison Salisbury, only to have National Political Correspondent David Broder resign. Broder accused New York of "a parochialism of outlook," "faulty and sometimes bizarre judgments," "endless bureaucratic frustrations in the New York office." The Salisbury idea was dropped--temporarily. Eight months ago, the paper hired James Greenfield, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs (and onetime TIME correspondent) who had resigned in 1966 as an assistant vice president of Continental Airlines. Greenfield was promised a "major job," and in due course Managing Editor Daniel and Assistant Managing Editor Rosenthal, backed by Publisher Arthur Ochs ("Punch") Sulzberger, decided to send Greenfield to Washington to replace Wicker (who would have kept his column). The bureau again objected, but after six weeks of inconclusive discussions, New York decided to go ahead with the move anyway. The result was genteel mutiny.

Wicker rushed down from New Hampshire, where he was covering the primary campaigns, to protest the outsider's appointment. Reston rushed up from Washington. Everyone now insists that resignations were never threatened, but the danger of losing Reston, Wicker and White House Correspondent Max Frankel was implicit. Top journalistic talent is hard to find these days, and the loss of such stars was too much to risk. Punch Sulzberger capitulated, agreed to reverse his decision. Greenfield resigned, shook hands all round and walked out of the Times without even bothering to clean out his desk. Behind him he left a rather dazed group of New York editors and a Washington-bureau staff that greeted the news of Punch's reversal with cheers of "We won!"

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