Division II championship ice hockey team,[6] Rosenthal went to work as a news assistant for The New York Times.

[2] In the spring of 1971, he was an editorial assistant on the team that produced the Pentagon Papers, which exposed American activities in Southeast Asia.

[1][2] Starting on the city desk, he became the paper’s Africa correspondent in 1982,[2] and also covered conflicts in Lebanon and Israel.

[8] During his term, he witnessed staff cuts and money-saving changes to the reporting process, including shorter stories and smaller photographs.

[2] In 2007, Rosenthal became the executive editor of The Chauncey Bailey Project, a team of journalists working for news outlets throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, tasked with investigating the murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey.

[14] While Rosenthal was managing editor, the San Francisco Chronicle won a Pulitzer Prize for its feature photography.

[4] The paper also received the prestigious George Polk Award for its investigative reporting of the BALCO labs and performance-enhancing drugs scandal.