FOR THE VERY LAST TIME, PLEASE READ THIS COLUMN!

NEW YORK - On Jan. 6, 1987, when The New York Times printed my first
column, the headline I had written was: "Please Read This Column!" It was
not just one journalist's message of the day, but every writer's prayer --
come know me.

Sometimes I wanted to use it again. But I was smitten by seizures of
modesty and decided twice might be a bit showy. Now I have the personal and
journalistic excuse to set it down one more time.

This is the last column I will write for The Times and Thursday was my last
working day on the paper. I have no intention of stopping writing,
journalistically or otherwise. And I am buoyed by the knowledge that I will
be starting over.

Still, who could work his entire journalistic career -- so far -- for one
paper and not leave with sadnesses, particularly when the paper is The
Times? Our beloved, proud New York Times -- ours, not mine or theirs, or
yours, but ours, created by the talents and endeavor of its staff, the
faithfulness of the publishing family and, as much as anything else, by the
ethics and standards of its readers and their hunger for ever more
information, of a range without limit.

Arrive in a foreign capital for the first time, call a government minister
and give just your name.

Ensues iciness. But add "of The New York Times," and you expect to be
invited right over and usually are; nice.

"Our proud New York Times" -- sounds arrogant and is a little, why not? But
the pride is individual as well as institutional. For members of the staff,
news and business, the pride is in being important to the world's best
paper you hear? -- and being able to stretch its creative reach. And there
is pride knowing that even if we are not always honest enough with
ourselves to achieve fairness, that is what we promise the readers, and the
standard to which they must hold us:

I used to tell reporters: The Times is far more flexible in writing styles
than you might think, so do not button up your vest and go all stiff on us.

But when it comes to the foundation -- fairness -- don't fool around with
it, or we will come down on you.

Journalists often have to hurt people, just by reporting the facts. But
they do not have to cause unnecessary cruelty, and that goes for critics, too.

When you finish a story, I would say, read it, substitute your name for the
subjects. If you say, well, it would make me miserable, make my wife cry,
but it has no innuendo, no unattributed pejorative remarks, no slap in the
face for joy of slapping, it is news, not gutter gossip, and as a reporter
I know the writer was fair, then give it to the copy desk. If not, try
again -- we do not want to be your cop.

Sometimes I have a nightmare that on a certain Wednesday -- why Wednesday I
do not know -- The Times disappeared forever. I wake trembling; I know this
paper could never be recreated. I will never tremble for the loss of any
publication that has no enforced ethic of fairness.

Starting fresh -- the idea frightened me. Then I realized I was not going
alone. I would take my brain and decades of newspapering with me. And I
understood many of us had done that on the paper - moving from one career
to another.

First I was a stringer from City College, my most important career move. It
got me inside a real paper and paid real money. Twelve dollars a week, at a
time when City's free tuition was more than I could afford.

My second career was as a reporter in New York, with a police press pass,
which cops were forever telling me to shove in my ear.

I got a two-week assignment at the brand-new United Nations, and stayed
eight years, until I got what I lusted for -- a foreign post.

I served The Times in Communist Poland, for the first time encountering the
suffocating intellectual blanket that is communism's great weapon. In due
time I was thrown out.

But mostly it was Asia. The four years in India excited me then and forever.

Rosenthal, King of the Khyber Pass!

After nine years as a foreign correspondent, somebody decided I was too
happy in Tokyo and nagged me into going home to be an editor. At first, I
did not like it, but I came to enjoy editing once I became the top editor.

Rosenthal, King of the Hill!

When I stepped down from that job, I started all over again as a Times Op-Ed
columnist, paid to express my own opinions. If I had done that as a
reporter or editor dealing with the news, I would have broken readers'
trust that the news would be written and played straight.

Straight does not mean dull. It means straight. If you don't know what that
means, you do not belong on this paper. Is that clear?

As a columnist, I discovered that there were passions in me I had not been
aware of, lying under the smatterings of knowledge about everything that I
had to collect as executive editor -- including hockey and debentures, for
heaven's sake.

Mostly the passions had to do with human rights, violations of -- like
African women having their genitals mutilated to keep them virgin, and
Chinese and Tibetan political prisoners screaming their throats raw.

I wrote with anger at drug legitimizers and rationalizers, helping make
criminals and destroying young minds, all the while with nauseating
sanctimony.

As a correspondent, it was the Arab states, not Israel, that I wanted to
cover. But they did not welcome resident Jewish correspondents.

As a columnist, I felt fear for the whittling away of Israeli strength by
the Israelis, and still do.

I wrote about the persecution of Christians in China. When people, in
astonishment, asked why, I replied, in astonishment, because it is
happening, because the world, including American and European Christians
and Jews, pays almost no attention, and that plain disgusts me.

The lassitude about Chinese brutalities is part of the most nasty American
reality of this past half-century.

Never before have the U.S. government, business and public been willing,
eager really, to praise and enrich tyranny, to crawl before it, to endanger
our martial technology -- and all for the hope (vain) of trade profit.

America is going through plump times. But economic strength is making us
weaker in head and soul. We accept back without penalty a president who
demeaned himself and us. We rain money on a Politburo that must rule by
terror lest it lose its collective head.

I cannot promise to change all that. But I can say that I will keep trying
and that I thank God for (a) making me an American citizen, (b) giving me
that college-boy job on The Times, and (c) handing me the opportunity to
make other columnists kick themselves when they see what I am writing, in
this fresh start of my life.

[sidebar]

ROSENTHAL'S 55-YEAR CAREER AT THE NEW YORK TIMES ENDS

By Clyde Haberman

NEW YORK -- After 55 years as a reporter, foreign correspondent, editor and
columnist, A. M. Rosenthal spent his last working day at The New York Times
packing up his memories the only way he knew how: by writing about them.

Mr. Rosenthal ended a run of nearly 13 years on the newspaper's Op-Ed page
with a column (Page 6) that looks back on a career that made him one of the
most influential figures in American journalism in the last half of this
century.

"I've seen happier days," he acknowledged in an interview.

But there was one word that he said he would never use to describe his new
status. Don't dare to whisper "retirement," he said, recalling what the
television journalist Barbara Walters, an old friend, told him a few weeks
ago when it became clear that his weekly column, "On My Mind," was near
an end.

"She said to me, 'But Abe, you're starting fresh,' " he said.

"And I suddenly realized, of course I was. Then I realized that I'm not
going alone. I'm taking my head with me. I'm going to stay alive
intellectually."

Mr. Rosenthal, 77 and universally known as Abe, said he intended to
continue "writing journalistically," though at this point he had no
specific plans. "I want to remain a columnist," he said.

There was an unmistakable end-of-an-era feel to the announcement Thursday
that Mr. Rosenthal would leave a newspaper that, family aside, had been his
life.

Indeed, during his 17 years as its chief editor, until he stepped down in
1986 with the title of executive editor, "Rosenthal" and "The Times" were
pretty much synonyms for many readers -- often, though not always, with
their approval.

Abraham Michael Rosenthal brought raw intelligence and enormous passion to
the job, qualities that were apparent from his first days at The Times, as
a part-time campus correspondent at City College in the 1940s.

After he became a fulltime reporter in 1944, Mr. Rosenthal covered the
fledgling United Nations. Then, from 1954 to 1963, he was a foreign
correspondent, based in India, Poland and Japan. Covering India was a
personal high point. But it was in Poland, whose Communist rulers expelled
him in 1959, that he won a Pulitzer Prize.

Under Mr. Rosenthal, the once-ponderous Times became a far livelier paper.
Major innovations were quickly copied at other newspapers, notably special
sections on lifestyles and science that were introduced in the 1970s.

But his biggest accomplishment, in his view, was keeping "the paper
straight," which meant keeping the paper's news columns free of writing
that he felt stumbled into editorial judgment.

On that score, he did not lack for critics. With his passion came dark
moods and a soaring temper. Mr. Rosenthal made many journalists' careers,
but he also undid some.

Even now, years after his editorship, his defenders and his attackers talk
about him with equal vehemence.

Mr. Rosenthal agreed that people tended not to be neutral about him.

Many will be saddened by his departure from The Times. "And," he said,
"there'll be people dancing."