Rating: 
Summary: The Establishment Press Protects its Biggest Member
Review: "The Trust" tells a story most literate Americans almost know by heart. There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- new here. Yet the reviews have all been misleadingly complimentary so that the myth of the smug, somewhat stupid NYTimes can go on. It is being beat badly these days by any news service on line. Reading the front page of the Times these days is like reading a monthly magazine ten years ago. The paper uncovers nothing new and the stories, offering value added interpretation, are boring.The book does bring to light one aspect: Arthur, Jr., current publisher and pooh bah, is incredibly and dangerously dumb. Looks to the charlatan business expert to give him what he so sorely lacks in brains, experience, and a legitimate education.
Rating: 
Summary: A VERY GOOD BOOK ON THE FIRST FAMILY OF NEWSPAPERS!
Review: "The Trust," is a very well written account of the family that has operated The New York Times for over 100 years. The book is as much about the family as it is about the newspaper. The only shortcomming is sometimes periods of time (i.e. World War II) are too condensed. But overall a fascinating read on a interesting topic!
Rating:
Summary: All in the Family
Review: A wonderfully readable account of the family that has owned the New York Times since 1896. While the authors have been justly criticized for focusing too much on the gossip surrounding the Ochs-Sulzberger clan, they have also convincingly succeeded in conveying just how unique this family is, a family whose single-minded mission over four generations has been the care and feeding of one of the great icons of America, the New York Times. In these times of bloated self-enrichment through speculative Internet stocks, the Ochs-Sulzbergers come across as wonderfully retro--a family devoted not to money, but to the New York Times.
Rating: 
Summary: Immensely enjoyable book about our premier media family
Review: Alex Jones and Susan Tifft have written a masterful book about the Sulzbergers, America's premier media family and stewards of arguably the world's greatest newspaper. Offering rich detail and flowing prose, they capture the ethos of The New York Times and the remarkable men and women who own the paper, who run it, and who serve unflaggingly in the public interest. This is a book for media followers and general readers alike. It tells you, with carefully chosen anecdotes and trenchant analysis, how integral The Times is to American life.
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Summary: A truely personal account
Review: For anyone who has not read about the New York Times and the family behind the modern day company, this is a must. An account that was more personal that expected and spoke more of the people and feeling behind the paper than the corporate history. A great read.
Rating: 
Summary: The story of the family dynasty behind the headlines
Review: I listened to this book on cassette tape, which is an abridged version of the book. It's very interesting, well presented, and professionally recorded, spoken by Steve Tom, who has a pleasantly authoritative voice. It comes on four tapes, recorded front and back. Total playing time is about 6 hours. There's no accompanying music, as is the case with many fictional books on tape, except for the transitions that ends one side and begins another. The book tells the story of how Adolph Ochs, shortly after the Civil War, started both a newspaper and a family dynasty that became the New York Times. Their family tree, their Jewish culture, and their approach to the paper, which has been described by many others, is told here with names, anecdotes, and quotes. The abridged version of the story (I haven't read the book) spends more time with the concern of which member of the each successive generation would assume control, and less with editorial decisions than you might think. The earliest stories of Adolph Ochs are an insight into the financials decisions that helped him achieve the coup of siezing control of the paper, and his marriage to the daughter of the rabbi who was leading the Jewish Reformation movement in America in the late 19th century lends insight into the family culture. The cassette box indicated that this story explores such significant events as the Holocaust, the Pentagon Papers, and Watergate. Each is mentioned on the tape, but I found that only the Pentagon Papers story had any significant treatment. As to the others, if you weren't paying attention, you'd miss any mention of them at all. Perhaps the books has more. A big warning regarding foul language: the first three cassettes had none that I recall, but the fourth cassette, which begins to deal with the 1980's up to the time the book was written, suddenly assaults the listener with a several occurrences of foul language. It's one thing to see these words in printed form, quite another to have the narrator speak them out loud on the tape. The "f" word and "s" word are not only used in direct quotes from the family's exclamations, but are also used to graphically describe homosexual behavior in one passage that is quite graphic. The fourth cassette should be rated "R" as a minimum, if not worse. Consider yourself warned. Don't just pop these cassettes into the car tape deck during the family vacation. The bottom line: if you're a NYT subscriber, the story told here is probably of great interest to you. If you follow news at all, you probably know of the control that the New York Times exerts in American media, and would benefit from knowing more about the source of much of America's news.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully entertaining history, without fear or favor
Review: I spent a week devouring this book slowly, enjoying it like a fine meal. From the beginnings in Tennessee to the present, this book and this story have the makings of an American epic, and the authors do a wonderful job making you care about these people and the newspaper they care about. Those who found shortcomings in this book, I suspect, wanted something other than the rich story that is here. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: The Trust is terrific!
Review: I think The Trust is absolutely riveting. It's worth reading for the chapter on the Pentagon Papers alone--a drama that has you on the edge of your seat, even though you know what happened! But The Trust is a lot more than that. The decisions behind what runs, and what does not run, in The New York Times are complex and difficult. For the first time--as far as I can tell--the authors, with the skill and caring of fine novelists, show us who these people are and why they do (and did) the things they do. If you want to know how The New York Times came to be what it is, read this book. It's a story of human courage, frailty, jealousy, ambition, loss and success. In short--the story of a family. It's right out of Balzac. I really loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I work with Craig Aronoff of the Family Enterprise Center at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, so I was thrilled to read about the part he played in keeping the Times' family together. It's tough to run a business and a family at the same time, and this really gave me insight into how the family handled its problems.
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Summary: The fall and decline of a family paper
Review: It is not surprising that this book's major revelations have not had greater circulation given the nature of family ownership of the vast majority of the biggest media conglomerates in the country, including the massive Gannett holdings of all forms of media all over the world, the enormous Newhouse "out-of-the-shtetl" holdings of not only papers, but magazines, book publishers and electronic media, the Washington Post, and its TV stations, etc., but you would think that some of them would be discussed a bit more than zero. Unknown in the US is any coverage of what the rest of the world classifies as the "Jewish conspiracy" of media dominance in the US. It appears daily in the major media in the Islamic world as the reason for US support of Israel and the reason for jihad against the infidels. It also explains much of French, German and British hatred of the US, long before GW Bush showed up. This book covers some of this, but not much, and is one of the reasons it does not get more stars. But the book has some great insights such as the following.
Did you know that Punch Sulzberger viewed the current publisher, his son "Pinch" Sulzberger's positions on the Vietnam War to be treasonous because his son said he would cheer on the death of an American soldier over a Viet Cong in Vietnam in a face to face fight? Do you know that the majority of the editorial positions at the Times are held by militant homosexuals, and that one of the editorial writers at the Times is married to a member of the Massachusetts Supreme court who cast the deciding vote on the issue of legalizing gay marriage in that state but never revealed his affiliation in his many columns on the issue? (The Times' own ombudsman, Daniel Okrent, recently said that the Times' coverage of homosexual issues has crossed the line from reportage to advocacy.) Do you know that the Times is a "publicly held" company, but the family has prevented any kind of modern corporate governance with its stranglehold on its preferred stock while at the same time the paper screams about corporate transparency at every other corporation in the US? And that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to "The Trust" that guarantees the succession of the male heir to the throne. A corrupt American version of British primogeniture in kingly succession to the Time's monarchy.
But this book also shows why the Times has become a shadow of its former self, is beset by scandal after scandal such as the Jason Blair forgeries (which occurred after the publication of this book) and has resulted in the gradual decline of a formerly great paper. While newspapers are probably doomed in this century, just as the town criers before them, as they are replaced by the internet and cable television news, you can find out why The New York Times is in its death spiral by reading this book. Unfortunately the authors were reluctant to get into the business consequences of the loss of credibility of publications such as the Times with mainstream Americans, but this is still a very worthwhile book. Unfortunately the billions of dollars sucked out of the unsuspecting shareholder of the Times never gets to read about the corruption and moral bankruptcy of current Times management, but this book would be a good place to start.
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