A.M. Rosenthal

Abraham Michael "A.M." Rosenthal (May 2, 1922 – May 10, 2006) was a New York Times executive editor (1977–88) and columnist (1987–1999) and New York Daily News columnist (1999–2004). He joined the New York Times in 1943 and remained there for 56 years, to 1999. Rosenthal won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for international reporting. As an editor at the newspaper, Rosenthal oversaw the coverage of a number of major news stories including the Vietnam war, the Pentagon Papers, and the Watergate scandal. Together with Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, he was the first westerner to visit a Soviet GULAG camp in 1988. His son, Andrew, was the New York Times editorial page editor from 2007-2016.

Rosenthal was born on May 2, 1922, in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, to a Jewish family. His father was a farmer named Harry Shipiatsky who emigrated to Canada from Belarus in the 1890s and changed his name to Rosenthal. He also worked as a fur trapper and trader around Hudson Bay, where he met and married A. M.'s mother, Sarah Dickstein.

The youngest of six children, when he was still a child, his family moved to the Bronx, New York, where Rosenthal's father found work as a house painter. During the 1930s, though, tragedy would hit the family, with Rosenthal's father dying in a job accident and four of his siblings dying from various causes. Rosenthal developed the bone-marrow disease osteomyelitis, causing him extreme pain. After several operations Rosenthal recovered enough to attend public schools in New York City and attend City College. In 1943, while at City College, he became the campus correspondent for The New York Times. In 1944, he became a staff reporter.

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