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A few weeks, perhaps even months, earlier than this date [March 25], it was generally known around the Times -- although I don't think Punch ever confirmed this or anyone else ever confirmed it factually to me -- that Punch had this idea of consolidating news and Sunday departments very much in mind and had, as I remember the story, had asked both Rosenthal as the managing editor for the news department, existing news department, and Frankel as the Sunday editor, each to write, in a sense, competing statements as to how they viewed the consolidation, how they viewed the future of the news management of the Times. I'm reasonably sure that this is what actually had happened.

As I wrote in my memo that I'm now again reading from, “Punch had come to the determination within the last few days that Rosenthal would be the managing editor of the new, unified news department. This left Frankel, the Sunday editor, without a job. And in order to retain Frankel's services at the Times” -- this is a very important phrase -- [continuing] “and in order to retain Frankel's services at the Times it was necessary to name him to my post now,” that is, to announce Frankel as my successor at the same time as the announcement of the Rosenthal appointment.

I'm now going on and reading the next paragraph or so. “I understood all this and raised no objection except to state once again that I would have preferred to see a successor from the editorial department of the Times.” And here I have to repeat what I've already said to you because this is written in -- this is in this memo. I added that I felt that Frankel was an extremely able man, probably the most able and broad-gauged person in the Times building, and I felt it was an entirely reasonable choice of the publisher. But then came the bombshell.