Adolph S. Ochs

At a time when sensationalism dominated the newspaper industry, Adolph S. Ochs successfully set the precedent for objective and trustworthy journalism.

Adolph S. Ochs was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 12, 1958 to German-Jewish immigrants, Julius and Bertha Levy Ochs. Adolph was then raised in Knoxville Tennessee, where at age 11 he left grammar school to support his family and started work on the Knoxville Chronicle. Here, Adolph became experienced in the realm of printing as he worked as a printer, reporter, and office assistant.

In 1878, at the young age of 20, Adolph bought a controlling interest in the Chattanooga Times and became its new publisher once he noticed the paper starting to experience failure. It was here that Ochs set himself apart from the craze of yellow journalism, showcasing what he referred to as a "clean, dignified, and trustworthy" paper. In an age where publishers such as William Randolph Emerson and Joseph Pulitzer polluted newspapers with distorted accounts of scandals, Ochs took a risk in trying to sell such an honorable, dependable paper. His ability to distinguish between actual news events and editorial opinions allowed the Chattanooga Times to become one of the South's most admired and profitable dailies.

In 1896, Ochs jumped at the opportunity to purchase the ailing New York Times, a paper which had lost most of its readership to Emerson's Journal and Pulitzer's World, both on the market for only a penny an issue. Ignoring the advice of his advisers, Ochs dropped the price of his paper to one cent, believing that there was a mass readership for a quality paper that featured reliable, objective news rather than just editorials. Ochs was indeed correct when he attracted the attention of "thoughtful, pure-minded people, thereby increasing the paper's circulation from 9,000 in 1896 to 780,000 readers during the 1920s. Ochs' motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print", enabled the New York Times to establish itself as the nation's leading newspaper, long after the days of the yellow press.

Adolph Ochs contributed to the field of journalism a new aspect of organizing newspapers by separating news stories from opinionated editorials, allowing the New York Times and its reliable articles to prosper.

Works cited:
Ritchie, Donald A. American Journalists: Getting the Story. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print. (p. 159)
"Adolph Ochs." Adolph Ochs. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2013.
-Emilie Boyer