Carrying On a Tradition

Not by chance does the Chattanooga Times closely resemble the New York Times, right down to the headline type.

The papers share a common ancestry that goes back to 1878, the year that a onetime itinerant printer named Adolph Ochs paid $250 for a half-interest in the Tennessee daily. Ochs did so well that soon he owned the whole paper. By 1896 he was emboldened to expand. For $75,000 he acquired what was then New York City's most feeble daily, the Times.

Apprentice to Publisher. Long before his death, Adolph Ochs arranged that both papers would stay in the family. With only one child, Iphigene, that was not easy, but Ochs managed. Iphigene made an excellent marriage, to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, son of a cotton-textile manufacturer, and Son-in-Law Sulzberger made an excellent successor as pub lisher, president and ultimately board chairman of the New York Times. Furthermore, he had four children himself. And they got married and had children. After Ochs died in 1935, Arthur Hays Sulzberger was able to say that "the tradition carries on."

In Chattanooga, the tradition was chiefly borne by Sulzberger's second child, Ruth, who also made a good marriage. Her choice was Ben Hale Golden, a Kentuckian who, after marrying Ruth, put in a long apprenticeship on the Chattanooga paper and by 1957 had worked his way up to publisher.

That was part of the Times tradition too, in a way. Female descendants of Adolph Ochs have never been installed in the top positions at either paper, although some of them, like Ruth Golden, could have ordered it. Ruth, who was music critic of the paper for ten years, is one of four beneficiaries-all Arthur Hays Sulzberger's children-of the trust that owns both papers.

Then, after 18 years of marriage and four children, Ruth Sulzberger Golden brought suit for divorce against Ben. Last week directors-half of them Ochskin-of the Times Printing Co., which publishes the Chattanooga paper, accepted Ben Hale Golden's resignation as president and publisher and named Ruth in his place.

Humility and Respect. As the first female descendant of Patriarch Adolph Ochs to attain such eminence, Granddaughter Ruth, now 43, accepted her new stewardship with both humility and respect for tradition. "The Chattanooga Times," she wrote in a statement for the editorial page, "continues under the direction of the same family that has guided its path since 1878. It will be my earnest endeavor that the Chattanooga Times shall serve this area in every way that a responsible newspaper can, mindful always that it shall 'give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of any party, sect or interests involved.' "

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