Safire to hang up NYT hatchet

William Safire, the English language scholar and former Richard Nixon speechwriter whose conservative voice boomed from The New York Times&#...

William Safire, the English language scholar and former Richard Nixon speechwriter whose conservative voice boomed from The New York Times’s largely liberal opinion pages for more than 30 years, will write his last op-ed column on January. 24.

Safire, 74, said he had raised the subject of retiring with publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. more than a year ago. But he will continue to write his On Language column for The New York Times Magazine, a job he refers to as his ‘‘Dr. Jekyll’’ role at the paper.

Asked to describe his legacy, Safire said: ‘‘I was able to maintain a contrarian point of view on a powerful and articulate page, (and) I helped move along the idea of opinionated reporting.’’

A winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize, Safire also served as a Nixon speechwriter, where he authored the famous phrase —— ‘‘nattering nabobs of negativism’’ —— that Vice President Spiro Agnew used to describe administration critics. Although the term was interpreted to have been aimed at the profession in which Safire spent much of his life, he said he was misunderstood. ‘‘It wasn’t directed at the press. ‘‘It was directed at pessimists.’’ —NYT