TigerHawk writes, "If I were A.M. Rosenthal's family, I'm not sure how I'd feel about the biographical article the New York Times is running on its front page this morning". The Times obit notes:

As that injunction implied, the columns reflected his passions and what he saw as a personal relationship with readers. He addressed a range of foreign and domestic topics with a generally conservative point of view. But there were recurring themes —his support for Israel and its security, his outrage over human rights violations in China and elsewhere, his commitment to political and religious freedoms around the world, and his disgust at failures in America's war on drugs.

Note also whom Rosenthal's column was replaced with.

Update: Cliff May, who worked for Rosenthal, writes:

He was not always an easy man to work for. But by any standard, he was an extraordinary journalist of the old school.The Times, under him, was not always strictly neutral, but during his tenure a serious attempt was made to be fair to all sides, to separate news from analysis and to segregate both from opinion and partisanship.

Those days are long gone. Not just the Times but the entire media world is poorer for it.

Another Update: Somewhat related--Tim Blair awards The Mohamed Atta Prize For Mangled Metaphors to a Time magazine staff memo concerning departing managing editor Jim Kelly:

IT IS A FITTING TRIBUTE TO A MAN WHO WAS SITTING IN THE PILOT’S SEAT AT TIME ON THE MORNING OF 9/11/01, AND HASN’T MADE A MISSTEP SINCE.