James L. Greenfield, an urbane journalist who covered postwar world affairs for Time magazine, served as a State Department official in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and for nearly 25 years was a senior editor of The New York Times, died on Sunday at home in the rural town of Washington, Conn. The cause was kidney failure, his wife, Ene Riisna, said. As a foreign and diplomatic correspondent with an insider’s savvy about the workings of Washington, Mr. Greenfield was well placed for a career that took him from the globe-trotting reporter’s life in Europe and Asia into the company of world leaders as a government spokesman and then to the top echelons of the Times newsroom. A protégé of A.M. Rosenthal, a rising star who later became executive editor, Mr. Greenfield was hired by The Times in 1967 and soon became a focus of controversy through no fault of his own. Seeking to rein in the relative independence of The Times’s Washington bureau, Mr. Rosenthal in 1968 urged the publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger, to name Mr. Greenfield bureau chief, replacing the popular Tom Wicker, who also wrote a political column.

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Persons: James L, Kennedy, Johnson, Ene Riisna, Greenfield, A.M . Rosenthal, Rosenthal, Arthur O, Sulzberger, Tom Wicker Organizations: Time, State Department, The New York Times, Times, The Times Locations: Greenfield, Washington, Conn, Europe, Asia, Times’s Washington