The New York Times Is A Family Business

America’s most influential news company is controlled by the Sulzberger family. By exercising his personal authority, its latest scion has saved both the company and his family’s fortune.

A. G. Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times since 2018, in 2020. Photo by Patrick Farrell. Source.

With over 9.3 million individual paying subscribers for its print or digital editions, the New York Times is by far the most widely-read newspaper in the English-speaking world.¹ Its two closest competitors, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, each count fewer than 3 million paid subscribers. The paper is published by the eponymous, publicly-traded New York Times Company, which had about 5000 employees in 2021 and a market capitalization of about $5.6 billion as of January 2023.² The Times is one of the most valuable media companies in the world and arguably the single most socially and politically influential media property in the United States. It is also a family business. The Times’ chairman and publisher, the 42-year-old Arthur Gregg “A. G.” Sulzberger, is the sixth male member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family to continuously publish the paper since 1896. The family’s relationship to the Times also goes much deeper.