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Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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publisher and for that matter, the news executives, the managing editor

6,A courtesy on my part; there was no necessity to show the managing editor.

a chance to see what we were proposing to say. I, in this case, had two or three conferences with Rosenthal, then managing editor of the paper, on this issue. We did not see eye to eye on how this issue should be handled editorially. Abe Rosenthal felt that my proposed editorial was much too restrictive, was much too conservative, let's say, on the side of the Sixth Amendment, as he saw it, as distinct from the First Amendment, and there is a memo here, which I'm not going to re-read because it will be in the record, which illustrates the very sharp difference of opinion, not only on this subject, but in the general approach of the managing editor to the editorial page. It came out, even at this early date, - I take that back, it wasn't all that early. This was 1969 when I'd been running the page for eight years already, so it was right in the middle of my career. It came out very clearly then that the managing editor really did not want to see a strong editorial page, particularly one with which he disagreed, but even, in any case, in fairness, I think that he felt that way irrespective of what our positions would be.

And I believe that this attitude, perhaps even subconsciously on Rosenthal's part, did color the relationship, uneasy relationship, let's say, that we had during really virtually all of my tenure as editor of the editorial page. He really didn't like the idea of a strong editorial page. He actually said it once or twice. I was going through on the principle that we should have a strong editorial page, and I feel that there was a real undercurrent of hostility that went right through, and of course, my position was, as some of the other material that's already been entered in this history would indicate, that the editorializing that we (New York Times) shouldn't be doing was being done in the news columns, which of course was a point which Rosenthal didn't accept at all. In other words, he felt that it was absolutely





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