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Show 43 declaration that the newspaper would avoid the yellow journalism pervasive in other New York dailics. 112 Beginning with Ochs' tenure, The New York Times' reputation for solid journalism grew. In 1911,joumalist Will Irwin wrote: "Perhaps, among our greatest practitioners of commercial journalism is Adolph Ochs, publisher and proprietor of the New York Times .... I lis news is a sound product with few shoddy threads ... it comes the nearest of any newspaper in New York to presenting a truthful daily picture of New York and the world at largc." 113 The New York Times also was one of the first U.S. newspapers to assign a journalist to focus primarily on environmental issues. In 1951, one year after joining the New York Times editorial staff, John Bertram Oakes proposed a column focused on environmental issues: I thought that there ought to be a place in the Times for a column dealing with conservation, conservation news, which I felt we were neglecting totally in our news columns, although I was in the process of trying to beef it up in the editorial field. We'd always been pretty good in the Times on conservation, but on a spasmodic basis, and only on certain particular arcas. 114 Oakes' columns focused on wildlife protection, national parks and other public land issues. Oakes wrote more than twenty articles about the Echo Park Dam proposal in 112 Adolph S. Ochs, "Business Announcement," The New York Times. August 19, 1896. Will Irwin, Clifford F. Weigle, and David G. Clark, The American Newspaper, 1' 1 ed. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1969), 18. llJ 114 Columbia Uni,·ersity Libraries Oral History Research omce, Notable New Yorkers, John IJ. Oakes , l'art JV, Session I (December 3, 1996): 334, Mary Marshall Clark, interviewer, h11p: //www.columbia.cdulcu/lweb/digital/collcctions/nny/oakesjb/index.htm! (accessed November 1, 2007) |
