Following World War II, The New York Times continued to expand. The Times was subject to investigations from the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, a McCarthyist subcommittee that investigated purported communism from within press institutions. Arthur Hays Sulzberger's decision to dismiss a copyreader who plead the Fifth Amendment drew anger from within the Times and from external organizations. In April 1961, Sulzberger resigned, appointing his son-in-law, The New York Times Company president Orvil Dryfoos. Under Dryfoos, The New York Times established a newspaper based in Los Angeles. In 1962, the implementation of automated printing presses in response to increasing costs mounted fears over technological unemployment. The New York Typographical Union staged a strike in December, altering the media consumption of New Yorkers. The strike left New York with three remaining newspapers—the Times, the Daily News, and the New York Post—by its conclusion in March 1963. In May, Dryfoos died of a heart ailment. Following weeks of ambiguity, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger became The New York Timess publisher.
Technological advancements leveraged by newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and improvements in coverage from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal necessitated adaptations to nascent computing. The New York Times published "Heed Their Rising Voices" in 1960, a full-page advertisement purchased by supporters of Martin Luther King Jr. criticizing law enforcement in Montgomery, Alabama for their response to the civil rights movement. Montgomery Public Safety commissioner L. B. Sullivan sued the Times for defamation. In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the verdict in Alabama county court and the Supreme Court of Alabama violated the First Amendment. The decision is considered to be landmark. After financial losses, The New York Times ended its international edition, acquiring a stake in the Paris Herald Tribune, forming the International Herald Tribune. The Times initially published the Pentagon Papers, facing opposition from then-president Richard Nixon. The Supreme Court ruled in The New York Timess favor in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), allowing the Times and The Washington Post to publish the papers.
The New York Times remained cautious in its initial coverage of the Watergate scandal. As Congress began investigating the scandal, the Times furthered its coverage, publishing details on the Huston Plan, alleged wiretapping of reporters and officials, and testimony from James W. McCord Jr. that the Committee for the Re-Election of the President paid the conspirators off. The exodus of readers to suburban New York newspapers, such as Newsday and Gannett papers, adversely affected The New York Timess circulation. Contemporary newspapers balked at additional sections; Time devoted a cover for its criticism and New York wrote that the Times was engaging in "middle-class self-absorption". The New York Times, the Daily News, and the New York Post were the subject of a strike in 1978, allowing emerging newspapers to leverage halted coverage. The Times deliberately avoided coverage of the AIDS epidemic, running its first front page article in May 1983. Max Frankel's editorial coverage of the epidemic, with mentions of anal intercourse, contrasted with then-executive editor A. M. Rosenthal's puritan approach, intentionally avoiding descriptions of the luridity of gay venues.
Following years of waning interest in The New York Times, Sulzberger resigned in January 1992, appointing his son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., as publisher. The Internet represented a generational shift within the Times; Sulzberger, who negotiated The New York Times Company's acquisition of The Boston Globe in 1993, derided the Internet, while his son expressed antithetical views. @times appeared on America Online's website in May 1994 as an extension of The New York Times, featuring news articles, film reviews, sports news, and business articles. Despite opposition, several employees of the Times had begun to access the Internet. The online success of publications that traditionally co-existed with the Times—such as America Online, Yahoo, and CNN—and the expansion of websites such as Monster.com and Craigslist that threatened The New York Timess classified advertisement model increased efforts to develop a website. nytimes.com debuted on January 19 and was formally announced three days later. The Times published domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski's essay Industrial Society and Its Future in 1995, contributing to his arrest after his brother David recognized the essay's penmanship.
1945–1955: Continued period and staff changes In November 1945, the 44th Street Theatre was demolished. In its place, 229 West 43rd Street was expanded, leaving the building adjacent to Sardi's and the Paramount Theatre. By February 1948, the annex was combined with the old building, improving production capacity by more than half. The expansion gave the composing room a total of and more than one hundred linecasting type machines. In April 1950, additional floorage was provisioned to WQXR and WQXR-FM. By 1951, the Times had an editorial staff of 1,350; despite its size, the paper was an agile news machine. On April 11, 1951, at 1 a.m., MacArthur was relieved of his duties by Harry S. Truman. Within the hour, White House correspondent William H. Lawrence had dictated the story and sent it to the presses. At the Keith-Albee Building, the Timess Washington, D.C. bureau watched MacArthur address Congress the following week. Among the staff present was Anthony Leviero, the former White House correspondent before Lawrence who traveled to Wake Island with MacArthur and Truman for a conference. Leviero hastily penned a story detailing the conference, including MacArthur's assertion that China would not intervene in the Korean War—an event that resulted in a series of defeats ultimately leading to MacArthur's relief.
In December 1951, James died. He was succeeded by Turner Catledge. Under Catledge, The New York Times established daily news conferences in his office, eliminating the role of bullpen editors—such as Neil MacNeil—who determined the placement of stories and their size relative to the paper. Catledge staffed several positions, including appointing Robert Garst and Theodore Menline Bernstein as associate editors. According to Gay Talese, Catledge favored Bernstein; Garst was delegated to housekeeping roles and as acting managing editor. In 1953, Times photoengravers went on strike for two weeks. During the strike, The New York Times did not publish for the first time in its history. Supported by most Times employees, staff who crossed the picket line were ostracized. John Randolph was removed as picture editor in January 1954 after placing a photograph of newlyweds Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio kissing on the front page. Clifton Daniel became The New York Timess Moscow correspondent—the only permanent Russian correspondent for a Western newspaper—in 1954; Catledge ordered Daniel back to New York on Arthur Hays Sulzberger's orders in November 1955 after Daniel developed an ulcer.
1955–1961: McCarthyism and Sulzberger's resignation
The New York Times was subject to intense investigations by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, a Senate subcommittee that advanced McCarthyism and investigated purported communism from within press institutions. From December 1955 to January 1956, forty-four subpoenas were issued against current or former employees of the Times. The investigations divided the staff of The New York Times, comprising current Communist Party USA members—including a copyeditor caught editing a Times dispatch from Moscow, former members turned conservatives, and opponents of McCarthyism. The New York Timess management reckoned with retaining Ochs's values and denouncing the investigation; Times management believed that the paper was being specifically singled out for its opposition to Senate Internal Security Subcommittee chairman James Eastland's values, as well as those of his colleague William E. Jenner and subcommittee counsel J. G. Sourwine, by condemning segregation in Southern schools, the methods used by other congressional committees, and McCarthyism.
Sulzberger believed that The New York Times was not a sacrosanct institution above a congressional investigation and stated his opposition to communism, urging employees not to plead the Fifth Amendment. A Times copyreader who did not reveal his political leanings appeared before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and plead the Fifth Amendment; Sulzberger dismissed the copyreader. The American Civil Liberties Union issued a letter of protest as a result of the dismissal. Sulzberger published the letter and his response in The New York Times. The letter polarized readers and was poorly received in some quarters, including by Ochs's nephew John Bertram Oakes. Sulzberger and his son-in-law, The New York Times Company president Orvil Dryfoos, drafted a statement in November 1955 to justify dismissing further employees. The rising cost of newspaper production and the recession of 1958 cut into The New York Timess profits in the years following the investigations. By 1959, Sunday edition numbers necessitated a west side expansion of 229 West 43rd Street. The annex was used primarily for publishing the Sunday issue, which had a circulation of 1,600,000 by 1967 and varied in weight between four and seven pounds.
Times reporter Herbert Matthews' articles in the late 1950s, which consistently supported the idea that Fidel Castro would hold free elections and restore the Cuban constitution, played a significant role in U.S. foreign policy and helped persuade Washington to cease shipments of arms to Fulgencio Batista.Anthony DePalma, "Myths of the Enemy: Castro, Cuba and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times." (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2004), 4. In 1959, Castro awarded a medal to The Times and wrote: "To our American friend Herbert Matthews with gratitude. Without your help, and without the help of the New York Times, the Revolution in Cuba would never have been."
Dryfoos's role in The New York Times increased after 1958, when Sulzberger suffered a stroke. In January 1961, following an account in The Nation, a Times correspondent in Guatemala reported of an offensive against Cuba. Correspondent Tad Szulc was in Miami while being transferred from Rio de Janeiro to Washington, D.C. and discovered invasion plans on the Bay of Pigs. Szulc appeared to Dryfoos and Catledge to inform them of the invasion; both men were hesitant to publish the story, with Dryfoos believing that the Times could be blamed for bloodshed if the invasion failed. The men called James Reston, Sulzberger's assistant, who advised them not to publish "any dispatch that would pinpoint the timing of the landing". The decision was criticized by Bernstein and news editor Lewis Jordan. The Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 was a failure for the United States; then-president John F. Kennedy summoned Catledge to chide him for not publishing further information. On April 25, 1961, amid poor health, Sulzberger resigned and appointed Dryfoos as his successor. As publisher, Dryfoos sought to expand The New York Times into the Pacific Coast. The endeavor was a logistical challenge for the Times, which insisted on using Linotype machines. The New York Times diverted the Western editions copies to Teletypesetters that could transmit keystrokes to Los Angeles. Led by Andrew Fisher, the Western edition was identical to the New York paper.
1961–1964: Newspaper strike and Dryfoos's death