Longtime Globe Publisher Taylor Dies

The man remembered for negotiating the sale of the Boston Globe to the New York Times has died.

William Osgood Taylor II was publisher of the Globe for 19 years and was the fourth member of his family — after his father, grandfather and great-grandfather — to hold that position. The Taylor family had owned the paper since the 1870s.

He died at his home in Boston on Sunday night, two years after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was 78.

During his tenure at the paper, Taylor set in motion the Globe's transition to the computer age and saw the paper win nine Pulitzer prizes. In 1993, he brokered a deal to sell the Globe to the New York Times for $1.1 billion, which at the time was the highest sale price ever for a newspaper.

WBUR's All Things Considered host Sacha Pfeiffer spoke about Taylor with former Globe reporter, editor and columnist Marty Nolan, who worked under Taylor for 30 years and described what the media landscape looked like when Taylor took over the Globe in 1978.