Abraham Michael "Abe" Rosenthal (May 2, 1922 – May 10, 2006) was an American journalist who served as The New York Times executive editor from 1977 to 1986. Previously he was the newspaper's metropolitan editor and managing editor. Following his tenure as executive editor, he became a columnist (1987–1999). Later, he had a column for the New York Daily News (1999–2004).
He joined the newspaper in 1943 and remained at the Times for 56 years, to 1999. Rosenthal won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for international reporting.[1] As an editor at the newspaper, Rosenthal oversaw the coverage of numerous major news stories including the escalation of the United States military's involvement in the Vietnam War (1961–1975), the New York Times scoop of the Pentagon Papers (1971), and events that were part of the Watergate scandal (1972–1974). Rosenthal was instrumental in the paper's coverage of the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder case, which established the concept of the "bystander effect", but later came to be regarded as flawed and not credible.
Together with Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, he was the first Westerner to visit a Soviet Gulag camp in 1988. His son, Andrew Rosenthal, was The New York Times editorial page editor from 2007 to 2016. His eldest son, Jonathan Rosenthal, is a retired physician who specialized in infectious diseases. His middle son, Daniel, is a retired financial executive who now owns a horse farm.