From The New York Times:
A. M. Rosenthal, a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent who became the executive editor of The New York Times and led the paper’s global news operations through 17 years of record growth, modernization and major journalistic change, died yesterday in Manhattan. He was 84. His death, at Mount Sinai Medical Center, came two weeks after he suffered a stroke, his son Andrew said. Mr. Rosenthal lived in Manhattan.
From ink-stained days as a campus correspondent at City College through exotic years as a reporter in the capitals and byways of Europe, Asia and Africa, Mr. Rosenthal climbed on rungs of talent, drive and ambition to the highest echelons of The Times and American journalism. Brilliant, passionate, abrasive, a man of dark moods and mercurial temperament, he could coolly evaluate world developments one minute and humble a subordinate for an error in the next. He spent almost all of his 60-year career with The Times — he often called it his life — but it was a career in three parts: reporter, editor and columnist.
More here.