Max Frankel ’52, GSAS’53, Pulitzer Prize-Winning NYT Correspondent and Editor

Max Frankel ’52, GSAS’53, who rose to the pinnacle of American journalism as a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent and shaped decades of coverage at The New York Times, died on March 23, 2025, at his home in Manhattan.

Born an only child in Gera, Germany, on April 3, 1930, Frankel’s family fled Nazi Germany and arrived in New York in 1940 not speaking any English. Frankel’s language quickly improved; at the High School of Music and Art, a teacher urged him to work on the school newspaper and he eventually became its editor. At the College, Frankel studied journalism and was an editor at Spectator.

Frankel first joined the Times as a campus correspondent in 1949. While working full time as a reporter after graduating, he was drafted by the Army and spent much of the next two years as a public information officer. Frankel rejoined the Times in 1955 and did not leave for 48 years. He was a reporter and correspondent for 19 years, an editor for 21 years and a columnist for the Sunday magazine for six years.

Shaping the paper’s news pages in a tumultuous period during his first decade on the job, Frankel helped to tell the major stories of the era: about the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, the escalating Vietnam War, the implosion of the Soviet Union and many others. He rubbed elbows with, and relayed the words of, headline makers such as Nikita S. Khrushchev, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro and President Richard M. Nixon.

In 1971, the Times squared off against the Nixon administration over the Pentagon Papers. Some attorneys for the Times opposed publication, warning that the publisher might face prison and the paper ruinous fines. Frankel stepped up and a wrote a passionate plea that changed their minds; it was later used in the Times’ successful defense of publication before the Supreme Court.

A highlight of his career came in 1972 when he accompanied Nixon to China. Frankel was afforded unprecedented access into the homes and lives of residents who had been isolated since the 1949 Communist revolution. In eight days in Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou, he wrote 24 articles; he received the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.

In 1973, Frankel gave up reporting for editing, returning to New York to take charge of the Sunday sections. In 1976, Frankel was named editor of the editorial page, making him, literally, the voice of the Times.

For nearly a decade, Frankel wrote its principal editorials, supervised a dozen writers, and oversaw columns and opinion pieces as well as letters to the editor. The Times’ pages took on a new tone and substance, challenging liberal as well as conservative dogmas. “He set a constant example of integrity by insisting that all of us editorial writers, no matter how strongly we felt about an issue, had to give a fair account of the opposing view,” Jack Rosenthal, Frankel’s deputy, told The Times.

In 1986, Frankel was appointed as executive editor. He was widely credited with keeping a steady hand on the helm —raising morale, bringing more racial, ethnic and gender diversity to the staff, and sustaining the paper’s traditional journalistic standards for fairness and accuracy.

But the widespread use of computers and the specter of the internet were looming; despite growth in readership, the Times lost advertisers and revenues after the 1987 stock market crash. Cutbacks limited Times budgets for most of Frankel’s tenure: Advertising fell by almost half from 1987 to 19–93, his last full year in charge; profits fell from $160 million to $6 million.

In 1994, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. named managing editor Joseph Lelyveld to succeed Frankel. After stepping down, Frankel wrote a column, “Word & Image,” for the Sunday magazine as well as book reviews, news analyses and other articles. He authored two books: The Times of My Life and My Life With The Times (1999) and High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis (2004).

Frankel was lauded by the College with a John Jay Award for distinguished professional achievement (1979) and the Alexander Hamilton Medal (1992); and by the University with a Columbia Award for Excellence in Teaching (1967); GSAS’ Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement (2005); and a Columbia Medal for Excellence (1967).

He was predeceased by his first wife, Tobia Brown BUS’78, and is survived by his second wife, Joyce Purnick BC’67; children from his first marriage, David, Margot and Jonathan; and six grandchildren.

— Alex Sachare ’71