Adolph Ochs: Setting the Course of The New York Times

Adolph Ochs was an American journalist and newspaper publisher. He was known as the former owner of The New York Times. He also owned The Chattanooga, which known today as Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Ochs was born on March 12, 1858 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His parents were of German-Jewish descent. His father, Julius, was an educated man who with the Union during the American Civil War. His mother, Bertha, was a refugee of the revolution in Rhenish Bavaria. She sympathized with the South during the war. Despite their differences in sympathies, the Ochs family remained a strong household.

The war got the Ochs family to move to Knoxville, Tennessee. There, Ochs went to public school. He used his spare time to deliver newspapers. He worked with the Knoxville Chronicle under editor William Rule when he was just 11. Rule became Ochs’s earliest mentors. In 1871, Ochs moved to Providence, Rhode Islands to work as a grocer’s clerk while he attended night school. In 1872, Ochs returned to Knoxville and worked again for the Chronicle, working on the different details of the newspaper in the composing room.

At 19, Ochs became the publisher of The Chattanooga Times after he acquired its controlling interest out of his loan of $250. He created a commercial paper named The Tradesman the following year. Ochs was also a co-founder of the Southern Associated Press where he also served as president.

In 1896, Ochs was informed by Henry Alloway, reporter at The New York Times, that the paper was going a difficult financial time because of the stiff competition among the newspapers in New York City, and that it can be acquired at a greatly reduced price. Ochs did not hesitate to borrow money and purchase The New York Times. He established the New York Times Co. and positioned the company on a solid footing. Ochs became a major stockholder of New York Times Co.

In 1904, Ochs hired a new managing director in the person of Carr Van Anda. The duo refocused The New York Times in a rather partisan environment. They focus on objective journalism. Ochs also decreased the price of the newspaper from 3¢ to 1¢ per issue. At the time of Ochs’s purchase, The New Times had a readership of 9,000 which grew to 780,000 entering into the 1920s.

Ochs moved The New York Times headquarters to Longacre Square, which later known as Times Square. The newspaper became very influential in the US and earned a high reputation in American journalism.