Max Frankel
American journalist and editor (1930–2025) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Max Frankel (April 3, 1930 – March 23, 2025) was an American journalist who was executive editor of The New York Times from 1986 to 1994.
Max Frankel | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 3, 1930 |
| Died | March 23, 2025 (aged 94) New York City, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Columbia University (BA, MA) |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Spouse(s) |
Tobia Brown
(m. 1956; died 1987) |
| Children | David Frankel Margot Frankel Goldberg Jonathan Frankel |
Life and career
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Frankel was born in Gera, Germany, on April 3, 1930.[1] He was an only child, and his family belonged to a Jewish minority in the area. Hitler came to power when Frankel was three years old, and Frankel remembered Germany's racial hatred: "[I] could have become a good little Nazi in his army. I loved the parades; I wept when other kids marched beneath our window without me. But I was ineligible for the Aryan race, the Master Race that Hitler wanted to purify of Jewish blood…"[2][3][4]
Frankel came to the United States in 1940. He attended the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan, class of 1948. He attended Columbia College, where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Daily Spectator,[5][6] and began part-time work for The New York Times in his sophomore year. He received his BA degree in 1952 and an MA in American government from Columbia in 1953. He joined The Times as a full-time reporter in 1952. After serving in the Army from 1953 to 1955, he returned to the local staff until he was sent overseas in November 1956, to help cover stories arising from the Hungarian revolution. From 1957 to 1960 he was one of two Times correspondents in Moscow. After a brief tour in the Caribbean, reporting mostly from Cuba, he moved to Washington in 1961, where he became diplomatic correspondent in 1963 and White House correspondent in 1966.
Frankel was chief Washington correspondent and head of the Washington bureau from 1968 to 1972, during which he was a key actor in shepherding the eventual publication of The Pentagon Papers after he received excerpts of the papers from Neil Sheehan in March 1971,[7][8][9] and then Sunday editor of The Times until 1976, editor of the editorial page from 1977 to 1986 and executive editor from 1986 to 1994. He wrote a New York Times Magazine column on the media from 1995 until 2000. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his coverage of Richard Nixon's visit to the People's Republic of China.
Frankel was one of the panelists at the second 1976 United States presidential debate.[10] In the debate, Frankel asked incumbent president Gerald Ford about his response to criticisms regarding the Helsinki Accords, particularly the accusation that they were favorable to the Soviet Union. Ford defended himself by saying, "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration." Frankel incredulously asked for clarification, to which Ford replied that Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland did not consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union.[11][12] The incident tarnished Ford's reputation, reinforcing his image as clumsy and misguided.[13][14]
Frankel was interviewed in the 1985 documentary We Were So Beloved, a movie that interviewed German Jews who emigrated from Nazi Germany to New York City.[15] On November 14, 2001, in the 150th anniversary issue, The New York Times ran an article by the then retired Frankel reporting that before and during World War II, the Times had as a matter of policy largely, though not entirely, ignored reports of the annihilation of European Jews.[16] Frankel called it "the century's bitterest journalistic failure".
Frankel published the book High Noon in the Cold War – Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Cuban Missiles Crisis (Ballantine, 2004, and Presidio, 2005)[17] and, also, his memoir, The Times of My Life and My Life with the Times (Random House, 1999, and Delta, 2000).[18][19]
Personal life
Frankel was married twice. His first wife, whom he married in 1956, was Tobia Brown, with whom he had three children: David Frankel, Margot Frankel Goldberg, and Jonathan Frankel.[20][21][22][23] Tobia died of a brain tumor at the age of 52 in 1987.[21] Max Frankel was married again in 1988 to Joyce Purnick, a Times columnist and editor.[24]
Frankel died from bladder cancer at his home in Manhattan on March 23, 2025, at the age of 94.[1][20]
See also
References
External links
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