A Head of the Times

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Everyone at the New York Times knew that Joe Lelyveld would be the next executive editor, although most people didn't expect announcement of his elevation as soon as last week. What almost nobody knew, and everybody speculated about, was who would replace him as managing editor and heir apparent. The answer, revealed to several hundred assembled staff members last week, surprised practically everyone in the news business.

The new No. 2, and definitely not the heir apparent: Eugene Roberts, who at 61 is four years Lelyveld's senior and who left the Times in 1972 to transform the soggy Philadelphia Inquirer into one of the nation's foremost dailies. Lelyveld calls the low-key, deceptively shrewd Roberts "one of the great strategic thinkers in journalism," a judgment shared by most people in the industry. Several have tried to lure Roberts back into editing since he retired in 1990, after spurring his Inquirer staff to win 17 Pulitzer Prizes in 18 years on topics ranging from the intricacies of the federal budget to attacks on the public by police dogs. Roberts told all comers that he was happy teaching journalism at the University of Maryland.

The call from Lelyveld last month was different. The two are old friends who have never once, Roberts says, disagreed about journalistic philosophy. The paper has problems in local coverage and marketing to the suburbs, two of Roberts' specialties. And the Times is the Times -- the premier daily, the shared frame of reference for political, commercial, cultural and media elites. Its analysis becomes, almost by definition, the prevailing wisdom.

Even so, Roberts slept on it. "I had thought over proposals now and then from other newspapers. I always found that the next morning my pulse wasn't racing. But the more I thought about the Times, the more I got excited. It felt like home to me."

The hubbub over Roberts almost overshadowed the main event, the confirmation that the top post will pass in July from Max Frankel, 64, to Lelyveld, 57. The transition will mark a change in style -- Frankel is courtly and professorial, Lelyveld shy yet blunt -- but not necessarily in substance. Both men are Ivy Leaguers and Pulitzer prizewinners (Frankel for covering Richard Nixon's trip to China, Lelyveld for a book about South Africa) who have spent their adult life at the Times. Both reflect a newsroom esprit de corps that approaches religious fervor. Both are political liberals who preach the importance of balance and fairness. And both lament that economic pressures led to staff buyouts over the past couple of years but say the Times still has the resources it needs.

Whatever their views, moreover, most of the obvious recent changes -- to make the Times more hip and youthful -- have been propelled by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., 42. His tenure seems assured: his family owns the controlling stock.

Frankel is departing nine months ahead of the paper's executive retirement age, 65. His explanation: "I felt I had another career in me and wanted to do it while I was healthy. My successor, in my view, was obvious. And there's nothing worse than the last six months, when everybody else is counting down the days." He plans to write a memoir and launch a column about communications and the media for the Times Sunday magazine. His predecessor, Abe Rosenthal, has been a Times columnist since stepping down in 1986.

Last week's news defers the succession hopes of such seeming contenders as editorial-page editor Howell Raines, 51, and two figures who stand out from the white-male phalanx of Times management -- columnist Anna Quindlen, 40, and assistant managing editor Gerald Boyd, 43, who is black. Says Lelyveld: "The relative shortness of Roberts' return to the Times will mean that it doesn't cut off their career paths."

Roberts, a slow-spoken Southerner -- Lelyveld once timed a conversational pause at 65 seconds -- is all but legendary for his ability to inspire reporters and find assignments that bring out their best. At a newspaper where management tends to be austere, his informality (shambling around a newsroom in stocking feet with his shirttail out) and people skills are likely to have impact. But his biggest challenge will be to strengthen the paper's city and suburban coverage.

At the Times, metro reporting has long been seen as just a steppingstone. Thus, while incomparable at covering Sarajevo or Beijing, the paper is often upstaged at city hall by the tabloid Daily News and it was trounced by Long Island-based Newsday on the World Trade Center bombing and the racially linked shooting of Long Island Rail Road commuters in December.

Up-and-comers have always assumed that the key to their future lay in Washington or foreign bureaus -- as it did for Rosenthal, Frankel, Lelyveld and Roberts. Roberts tacitly concedes this status problem in praising Lelyveld as an exception: "One of the things that impressed me was that he could command any foreign assignment he wanted, but every so often he would come back to metro without any hang-ups." If the two new bosses are to strengthen the far-flung Times's hold on its home terrain, they will probably have to keep weaving that inspirational tale into its institutional mythology.

With reporting by John F. Dickerson/New York