Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. will retire as chairman and a member of the New York Times Co's board by the end of December, the newspaper publisher said on Wednesday.

Sulzberger Jr., 69, who joined the newspaper in 1978 as a correspondent, will be replaced as chairman by his son, A.G. Sulzberger, The Times publisher since 2018.

In his four-decade long tenure, Sulzberger Jr., who has been chairman of the board since 1997, spearheaded the transformation of the newspaper, known as "The Gray Lady," into a digital media company. He took the newspaper online in 1996.

Sulzberger Jr., whose family bought the Times in 1896, became its publisher in 1992 and it won 61 Pulitzer Prizes under his leadership, a record for any publisher or news organization.

He will assume the title chairman emeritus, the company said.

A.G. Sulzberger, a fifth-generation member of the Sulzberger family, had worked as a reporter at The Providence Journal and The Oregonian before joining The Times' metro desk in 2009.