Adolph S. Ochs

Media Publisher USA

September 18, 1976

A commemorative postage stamp on the Adolph S. Ochs – U.S. Newspaper Publisher :

Issued by United States of America

Issued on Sep 18, 1976

Design : The U.S. 13¢ stamp commemorating Ochs was issued eight decades after his acquisition of the Times. The design by Bradbury Thompson of Riverside, Connecticut, is based on a portrait of Ochs by S. J. Wolff. The publisher’s name is in Times-style type. First day ceremonies for the Ochs commemorative were held in New York City where 80 years earlier Ochs had taken controlling ownership of the New York Times.

Type : Stamp, Postal Used

Denomination : 13 cents

Name : Adolph Simon Ochs

Born on Mar 12, 1858 at Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

Died on Apr 8, 1935 at Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States

About :

“All the News That’s Fit to Print,” – the famous slogans of The New York Times, helps to demonstrate the astonishing influence of one man on one of the world’s most influential media.
Adolph Simon Ochs was born March 12, 1858 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His Jewish parents had immigrated to the United States from Bavaria, southern Germany. In the year of the U.S. Civil War’s end, 1865, the Ochs family settled in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Adolph began his great newspaper career by delivering papers. At age 11 he became an office boy and at 14 a printer’s devil on the Knoxville Chronicle. At 17 he was a compositor for the Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal. Two years later he helped establish the Chattanooga Dispatch. When only 20 he took over the decrepit Chattanooga Times for $250 and soon built it into one of the South’s leading journals.
At age 38 Ochs acquired control of The New York Times, which in its 45^th year was faltering. His journalistic principles and publishing management raised the Times daily circulation from 9,000 to 466,000. In 1901 he bought one Philadelphia paper and merged it with another, founded the Southern Associated Press, and served 35 years as a director of the Associated Press.
Ochs’ high standards for the Times won national and, ultimately, worldwide respect. In competition with journals that indulged in sensationalism, Ochs dedicated his newspaper to trustworthiness and thoroughness. He also introduced innovations, including a book review supplement and rotogravure pictures, and set high standards for acceptance of advertising in the Times.
The Ochs dedication to excellence brought honor as well as financial success to his expanding publishing enterprise. In 1918 the Times was awarded the first Pulitzer gold medal in journalism for meritorious public service.