I was the last reporter hired by A.M. Rosenthal at The New York Times. Late in the summer of 1986, Abe greeted me in his office and asked me about myself. The meeting was pro forma; I'd already been passed up the editorial ladder -- from the cultural news editor to various assistant managing editors, all the way to St. Peter himself, Arthur Gelb, the gatekeeper -- before my audience with God. I just needed the final stamp of approval, and barring visible traces of coke on my nose, it wasn't likely to be withheld.
Still, who wouldn't be nervous? Not just because A.M. Rosenthal was famous for a tempestuous demeanor that struck fear in the heart as often as it inspired awe and an exhilarated sense of journalism's mission (though these certainly were reasons enough). But I also knew that in joining the The Times's cultural news staff, and especially because my beat was Broadway, I would be going under a microscope as unforgiving as that for any correspondent dispatched to the latest global hotspot.
No one loved New York City more than Abe and Arthur. Yes, The Times was frequently ridiculed for covering the city less vigorously than it covered East Timor, but under Abe that could never be said of The Times's coverage of the arts. New York was the culture capital of the world, and no paper exerted more influence over that world than The Times. The paper had an unabashedly proprietary sense of this. God help any flack who failed to grasp this.
Abe kept our meeting brief, and I'll never forget his words as he led me to the door. "You'll spend the rest of your career here," he said matter-of-factly, extending a hand. "You know, this is a bigger risk for us than for you."
Before the turn of the year, he had been replaced by Max Frankel, and however one assesses the difference between Max and Abe, one thing is certain: The Times's cultural hegemony may have remained a constant, but its stewardship of that power would never again be as fiercely cultivated as it was in the days when Abe and Arthur ran the show.
I ended up not spending the rest of my career at The Times, and in the 80s and 90s many talented journalists would reject the notion, implicit in Abe's words to me, that a Times byline was worth whatever toll the place exacted from your soul, not to mention your bank account.
In the intervening years, when Abe was writing his loopy Times column and later his even loopier Daily News column, my wife and I would run into his wife, Shirley Lord, and him on occasion at one opening or another. He knew of my defection yet, perhaps having felt ill treated by the institution he'd devoted his life to, he always greeted me more warmly than I might have expected. It didn't matter; either way I was just a blip on vast Times screen.
But Abe: Well, I think it was New York City and its roiling arts scene that gave Rosenthal's perfervid jingoism a tolerable poignancy. Olav Hashalom, Abe.