DAVID B. CARUSO, The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Few moments in American journalism loom larger than the one that came in 1971, when New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger had to decide whether to defy a president, and risk a potential criminal charge, by publishing a classified Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

His choice, to publish the Pentagon Papers and then fight the Nixon administration's subsequent attempt to muzzle the story, cemented Sulzberger's place as a First Amendment giant — a role being celebrated after he died Saturday at age 86.

The former publisher, who led the Times to new levels of influence and profit while standing up for press freedom, died at his home in Southampton, N.Y., after a long illness, his family announced.

During his three-decade tenure, Sulzberger's newspaper won 31 Pulitzer prizes while he went about transforming the family business from perpetually shaky to the muscular media behemoth it was when he retired.

Weekday circulation climbed from 714,000 when Sulzberger became publisher in 1963 to 1.1 million when he stepped down as publisher in 1992. Over the same period, the annual revenues of the Times' corporate parent rose from $100 million to $1.7 billion.

Yet it was Sulzberger's positions on editorial independence that made him a hero of the profession, like when he rejected his own lawyers' warnings that even reading the Pentagon Papers, let alone publishing them, constituted a crime.

Sulzberger, who went by the nickname "Punch" and served with the Marine Corps, privately worried that he had doomed the newspaper but gave interviews saying the Times wouldn't allow the U.S. government to cover up its mistakes under the guise of national security.

"That is a wonderful way, if you've got egg on your face, to prevent anybody from knowing it: Stamp it SECRET and put it away," he said.

"Punch, the old Marine captain who never backed down from a fight, was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the press," his son, and current Times publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., said in a statement.

Sulzberger was the only grandson of Adolph S. Ochs (pronounced ox), the son of Bavarian immigrants who took over the Times in 1896 and built it into the nation's most influential newspaper.

The family retains control to this day, holding a special class of shares that give them more powerful voting rights than other stockholders.

Power was thrust on Sulzberger at the age of 37 after the sudden death of his brother-in-law in 1963. He had been in the Times executive suite for eight years in a role he later described as "vice president in charge of nothing."

But Sulzberger directed the Times' evolution from an encyclopedic paper of record to a more reader-friendly product that reached into the suburbs and across the nation.

Under his watch, the Times started a national edition, bought its first color presses, and introduced — to the chagrin of some hard-news purists — popular and lucrative sections covering topics such as food and entertainment.

"You forget the unbelievable outrage that greeted those sections. But in retrospect it was the right decision both editorially and economically," said Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

In 1992, Sulzberger relinquished the publisher's job to his son but remained chairman of The New York Times Co. Sulzberger retired as chairman and chief executive of the company in 1997. His son then was named chairman. Sulzberger stayed on the Times Co. board of directors until 2002.

Reacting to news of Sulzberger's death Saturday, former Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld said that his business success was matched by integrity in the newsroom.

"As an editor, you knew that if you went to the publisher and sought his support on an issue that you deemed to be of high importance, you could pretty much count on getting it. He knew how to back his people," Lelyveld said.

President Barack Obama said Sulzberger was "a firm believer in the importance of a free and independent press — one that isn't afraid to seek the truth, hold those in power accountable, and tell the stories that need to be told."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he "changed the course of American history with his journalistic decisions."

Significant free-press and free-speech precedents were established during Sulzberger's years as publisher, most notably the Times vs. Sullivan case. It resulted in a landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling that shielded the press from libel lawsuits by public officials unless they could prove actual malice.

"Punch Sulzberger was a giant in the industry, a leader who fought to preserve the vital role of a free press in society and championed journalism executed at the highest level," said Associated Press President and CEO Gary Pruitt. "The Associated Press benefited from his wisdom, both during his years on the board of directors and his thoughtful engagement in the years that followed."

In 1971, the Times led the First Amendment fight to keep the government from suppressing the Pentagon Papers.

Sulzberger read more than 7,000 pages of the documents and presided over a dramatic internal debate before deciding to publish. Then, he resisted a demand by Attorney General John Mitchell that the paper halt the series after two installments.

A federal judge delayed publication of additional installments, but in a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually sided with the Times and The Washington Post, and allowed the series to continue.

"There were those that thought some kind of deal or reconciliation with the government should have been sought," said First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who represented the Times in the court case. "It was Punch Sulzberger who made the decision to resist the government's effort. In making that decision he set in motion a litigation which not only preserved but protected the First Amendment for generations."

In their book "The Trust," a history of the Ochs-Sulzberger family and its stewardship of the paper, Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones cited Sulzberger's "common sense and unerring instincts."

In an interview in 1990 with New York magazine, Sulzberger was typically candid about the paper's readership.

"We're not New York's hometown newspaper," he said. "We're read on Park Avenue, but we don't do well in Chinatown or the east Bronx. We have to approach journalism differently than, say, the Sarasota Herald Tribune, where you try to blanket the community."

Sulzberger was born in New York City on Feb. 5, 1926, the only son of Arthur Hays Sulzberger and his wife, Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, Adolph's only child. One of his three sisters was named Judy, and from early on he was known as "Punch," from the puppet characters Punch and Judy.

Sulzberger's grandfather led the paper until his death in 1935, when he was followed by Sulzberger's father, who remained at the helm until he retired in 1961.

Except for a year at The Milwaukee Journal, 1953-54, the younger Sulzberger spent his entire career at the family paper after graduating from Columbia College in 1951. He worked in European bureaus for a time and was back in New York by 1955, but found he had little to do.

At various times, Sulzberger was a director or chairman of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, American Newspaper Publishers Association and American Press Institute. He was a director of The Associated Press from 1975 to 1984.

Sulzberger married Barbara Grant in 1948, and the couple had two children, Arthur Jr. and Karen. After a divorce in 1956, Sulzberger married Carol Fox. The couple had a daughter, Cynthia, and Sulzberger adopted Fox's daughter from a previous marriage, Cathy.

Carol Sulzberger died in 1995. The following year, Sulzberger married Allison Cowles, the widow of William H. Cowles 3rd, who was the president and publisher of The Spokesman-Review and Spokane Chronicle of Spokane, Wash. She died in 2010.

______________________________________________________________________________________

The Associated Press, The Associated Press

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger's three-decade tenure at The New York Times spanned multiple milestones in 20th-century journalism, as the newspaper navigated sensitive reporting of the Vietnam War, won key legal victories for freedom of the press and struggled to turn a profit as a print-centric industry grew into a digital one. The reach of Sulzberger, who died Saturday at 86, extended from the publication of the Pentagon Papers to giving the newspaper its first color photos and 31 Pulitzer Prizes.

Here are some major milestones in journalism accomplished by Sulzberger's New York Times from 1963, when he became publisher, to 1997, when he retired as chairman and chief executive:

PENTAGON PAPERS: Sulzberger read 7,000 pages of the government's secret history of the Vietnam War before deciding that the newspaper should publish them, in a 1971 series exposing classified government accounts of the war. Asked by a reporter who at the Times decided to publish the papers, Sulzberger gestured toward his chest and mouthed, "me." The series was stopped for two weeks when the Nixon administration won a court order suppressing it, saying national security was in jeopardy. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Times and The Washington Post, which had also begun publishing the reports.

FREE PRESS: Sulzberger was publisher when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the newspaper in New York Times vs. Sullivan, which extended press protections from libel lawsuits by public officials. The ruling required officials to prove actual malice to successfully sue. The paper also fought for other free speech precedents in court, arguing for reporters' rights to not identify anonymous sources in court or to surrender their notes.

THE BUSINESS SIDE: Sulzberger took over a newspaper struggling in a tough economy in the 1960s, with just over $100 million in annual revenues; by the time he left as publisher, it was a media conglomerate with revenues of close to $2 billion, owning more than a dozen newspapers including The Boston Globe, television stations, a news service and several magazines. Sulzberger added specialized sections to the paper such as science, home and entertainment, and opened the paper's first color printing plant in the mid-1980s. He put the newspaper on a budget and in the 1970s won union agreements that paved the way for computers to replace older printing machines in the composing room.

PULITZERS: The Times averaged more than one Pulitzer a year under Sulzberger's tenure. The industry's most prestigious prizes included a Public Service award in 1972 for the Pentagon Papers series, a national reporting award for the 1986 explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, and an award for commentary in 1978 to William Safire, a conservative columnist hand-picked by Sulzberger.

____________________________________________________________________________________

The Associated Press, The Associated Press

Reaction to the death of former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who died Saturday:

___

"Punch, the old Marine captain who never backed down from a fight, was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the press. His inspired leadership in landmark cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan and the Pentagon Papers helped to expand access to critical information and to prevent government censorship and intimidation." — Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., Sulzberger's son and the current publisher of the Times.

___

"As an editor you knew that if you went to the publisher and sought his support on an issue that you deemed to be of high importance you could pretty much count on getting it. He knew how to back his people. ... As well as a publisher and a colleague he was a good friend. The last years have been extremely difficult with his health problems. He bore them with great courage. I admired him hugely." — Former Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld.

___

"It was Punch Sulzberger who made the decision to resist the government's effort. In making that decision he set in motion a litigation which not only preserved but protected the First Amendment for generations. It was Punch Sulzberger who decided that this was a case that had to be fought. That decision was one that will be honored among not only journalists but future generations of Americans." — Floyd Abrams, the lawyer who represented the Times in the Pentagon Papers case.

___

"He was a firm believer in the importance of a free and independent press — one that isn't afraid to seek the truth, hold those in power accountable, and tell the stories that need to be told." — President Barack Obama.

___

"Thanks to Arthur Sulzberger's leadership and his ability to not only survive but thrive in the face of challenging industry dynamics, The New York Times has remained a cultural touchstone and a dynamic global enterprise for decades. Arthur was a great New Yorker and a luminary in one of our city's biggest industries, and his loss will be felt by many. My thoughts and prayers are with his friends and relatives as well as the larger New York Times family." — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

___

"It also became increasingly clear that the system of monarchy helped save the New York Times as a great newspaper. Punch made some bad calls as a businessman, along with some great ones, but by far the most important fact about him and his family was that they never wavered in their commitment to great journalism." — Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof.

___

"If you weren't around then, you forget the unbelievable outrage that greeted those sections. But in retrospect it was the right decision both editorially and economically." — Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, on Sulzberger's move to expand the Times to sections such as Living and Weekend.

___

"Punch Sulzberger was a giant in the industry, a leader who fought to preserve the vital role of a free press in society and championed journalism executed at the highest level." — Associated Press President and CEO Gary Pruitt.

___

"With enormous power and authority he was as humble a person as you could ever meet. ... People with enormous power often dominate a room. He did not. And yet the power and authority was there." — Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

___

"I found him always a gentleman and always ready to at least listen." — Public relations maven Howard Rubenstein, who brought many clients to meet with Sulzberger and Times editors.