Alan and Lionel sit down with AG Sulzberger, chair and publisher of the New York Times. AG took over as publisher of the New York Times six years ago after many years as a hack. His term coincided with that of Donald J Trump, for whom the Times was public enemy number one. AG stood his ground, telling the president to his face that his anti-press rhetoric was “not just divisive but increasingly dangerous”.
He and his team have taken the Times and transformed the digital offering, adding millions of subscribers worldwide. And he’s responsible for bringing a simple, yet addictive word game, Wordle, to a mass audience.
Recent weeks have seen the New York Times come under fire from several angles. AG continues to champion independent journalism—but does he always get it right?
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This transcript has been edited for clarity:
Alan Rusbridger:
Hello and welcome to Media Confidential, Prospect Magazine’s weekly dive beyond the clickbait to analyse what’s really happening in the vital world of media. I’m Alan Rusbridger. I’m here at Prospect House in London.
Lionel Barber:
I’m Lionel Barber. Coming up, we’ve had the pleasure of sitting down with AG Sulzberger, the chair of the New York Times.
Alan:
He was over in the UK to give the Reuters Institute lecture and was really good to talk to somebody with so much newspaper heritage. I’m pretty sure printing ink flows through his veins.
Lionel:
In our wide-ranging interview, we discussed the ongoing war in the Middle East, the coming presidential election in the US and the business model that keeps the New York Times ahead of many of its rivals.
Alan:
Remember, you can listen to and follow us wherever you get your podcasts to make sure that you never miss an episode. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter. We are @mediaconfpod.
[music]
Alan:
Lionel, once again, there’s an empty chair next door to me. Once again, you are peering at me from a glamorous hotel room somewhere. You’re not in France, I deduct.
Lionel:
No, I’m in cactus country, Dove Mountain, Arizona, attending the Allen Company Tech Entrepreneurs Conference and listening a lot to speakers like Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, on AI and all its potential. I would say very optimistic about the coming tech wave and its impact on the economy, high productivity, et cetera. Even though it’s very early in the morning, Alan, I’ve got a smile on my face.
Alan:
You look unusually chirpy. It’s just as well because the news here is not great in terms of the media industry. Both Talk TV and GB News have had developments in the last 24 hours. Talk TV, I don’t know if you’ve caught up with this, Lionel, but it’s closing as a linear station and is going to be on YouTube like Piers Morgan. It’s going to be a YouTube channel plus clips on social media having lost around £34 million last year, I think. Meanwhile, GB News declared losses of £42.5 million, which means it’s lost £76 million in two years. I’m just looking at the figures. It still says it has the ambition to be the UK’s largest news channel by 2028, so good on it.
Lionel:
I think we’ve been flagging that both of these news channels were in trouble. It doesn’t surprise me. It’s hard making money out of hard news. In my inbox, Alan, to be recommended, even though it’s 14,000 words, so you may need a bit of filleting, but Evan Osnos of the New Yorker has done a very long piece on Joe Biden. He went into the Oval Office, he’s written a biography of Biden, 2020, but he went into the Oval Office and asked Biden directly, “Are you going to run again? Are you the right person?”
He got a very direct reply, which sort of blows into smoke all this talk about Biden retiring and a new candidate. Biden just said about Trump, “No, I’m the only one who’s ever beaten him and I’ll beat him again.” Defiant. Joe Biden’s going to run. It’s worth reading the piece.
Alan:
Interesting. Okay, I will definitely read that. A couple of other straws in the wind here. Dan Wootton is leaving GB News.
[laughter]
Lionel:
Forgive the chuckle here from Arizona.
Alan:
He’s starting up a Substack for £5 a month. He’s starting up something, it’s going to be called Outspoken. It’s a new free speech brand. As if we needed a new new free speech brand after UnHerd and Spiked and Russell Brand and Mark Spain and all the rest of them. It’s going to be offering the real stories that mainstream media are censoring. That’s something to look forward to. More optimistically, More optimistically, Mehdi Hasan is launching a new media brand called Zeteo with unfiltered news and bold opinion. He was a star of American TV and is starting his own thing again on Substack with five staff. He’s got 94,000 subs already. Two little startups.
One other thing, Lionel, I think we ought to mention is this case which has been rumbling along for some time, but it hasn’t really broken through into the main media. These two Northern Irish journalists who did a documentary about 10 years ago and got onto the radar of the Police Service of Northern Ireland who tried to find their source. Really, for the last 10 years, these two journalists, Trevor Burney and Barry McCaffrey, have been trying to find out the extent to which the Police Service Northern Ireland went to bug their phones, track their emails, and so on and so forth. It’s now ended up in front of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.
It’s turned out that, not only with the PSNI infiltrating the electronic communications but so was the Durham police, so was the Metropolitan police. In the hearing, the MI5 and GCHQ refused to confirm or deny whether they too had been bugging journalists’ phones. I think this surveillance of journalists to get hold of their sources is a scandal. I’m slightly surprised that it hasn’t made more of a breakthrough.
Lionel:
I haven’t spotted that one, Alan. I wholeheartedly endorse your thoughts. I hope that MSM, that’s what we call it over here in America, that the mainstream media really will look at that and at least offer some commentary. Speak up. There’s the free speech moment.
Alan:
Yes. The PSNI have already paid them 875,000 in damages. Lots more is coming out, including there was an order on Apple to preserve all the iCloud treasure trove of these two journalists. I think it’s one to watch. The final thing I just want to quote, Lionel, is a speech by my old colleague, Gary Young, who gave a lecture at the City University. I’m just going to read this bit from his lecture. “When a dog bites man, that is not news. When a man bites dog is news.” That’s the saying that we were all brought up on. Gary said he’d often wondered whether the truism needed a qualifying footnote because sometimes events derive their potential news value precisely because they happen so often.
There are things that happen with such regularity and predictability that journalists have simply ceased to recognise their news value. Not least if those things that are least likely to happen to the people most likely to be journalists. Here was the crunch paragraph. “Much of what we’ve come to accept as commonplace has dulled our curiosity as to why so much of what is commonplace is unacceptable. There is value in asking, why do dogs keep biting people? Who owns these dogs? Why do these same people keep getting bitten?” I think that’s quite a wise maxim for news editors and journalists to spot patterns in the ordinary and work out why they’re happening.
[music]
Alan:
Okay, so this week we meet up with AG Sulzberger. If you’re not fully conversant with the Sulzberger family, to be born into the family, that’s the family that owns the New York Times is, I think, the nearest thing that the American Republic comes to a monarchy because AG Sulzberger was in some way destined to eventually take over the company. He took over as publisher just over six years ago. He lent the ropes as a reporter on to local newspapers. His term coincided with that of Donald Trump, for whom, famously, the New York Times was public enemy number one.
I think people sat up and noticed AG in that meeting that he had with Trump, which was supposed to be off the record, except that Trump leaked it. He said to his face that his anti, the president’s anti-press rhetoric was “not just divisive, but increasingly dangerous”. That’s the measure of the man.
Lionel:
Yes, he’s a really serious journalist. He did his time, as you say, as a reporter out in the sticks in America, and he’s now running one of, if not the, world’s biggest titles. He’s taken the time, along with his team, transformed the digital offering, adding millions of subscribers worldwide. He’s responsible for bringing a simple, yet addictive, word game to a mass audience, but more on that later.
[music]
Alan:
We’re thrilled to have in our Oxford studio, haha, we’re camping out in the office of the Reuters Institute in Oxford, AG Sulzberger, who is the publisher of the New York Times and who is here to give, in about half an hour’s time, the Reuters lecture. Just give us a flavor of what you’re going to be talking about tonight, AG.
AG Sulzberger:
I’m going to be talking a little bit about journalistic independence, which is something I have been writing about and talking about quite a bit in this last year, largely because we’re in this incredibly polarised moment defined by various tribes pushing their in-group narratives. The role of an independent journalist is to ask the complicating questions. It’s to have allegiance to nothing but the truth. I’m going to talk about how that work has gotten harder in the context of some of the societal pressures and talk about in the context of some of our more contested areas of coverage.
Alan:
Independence has been a big theme. I’ve seen a lot of what you’re talking about. Just for the sake of the readers who won’t have read as thoroughly as Lionel as I have in your back catalogue, independence from whom? From proprietors as well as from politicians and business? What’s the most important element of independence?
AG:
To me, independence is as much a state of mind as anything. Then that state of mind, I think, is applied to all those discrete challenges. Are you independent from government? Are you independent from financial conflicts? Are you independent from, as my great-grandfather said, any party sector interest involved. That mindset, the way I define it, is basically a first-order commitment to following the facts wherever they lead with a mind that is both open and sceptical. I think it’s that willingness to toggle between openness to maybe the idea that you didn’t think would be true or the perspective that you didn’t particularly want to hear, but to be sceptical of the exact opposite.
Sceptical of the information that seems to tidily confirm your thesis going into a reporting project or sceptical of the person who, in your heart of hearts, you may feel some affinity toward. That’s really the mindset for that. That the New York Times has an incredibly long tradition of that. My great-grandfather had a phrase, “without fear of favor”. I know that is a phrase that’s also well-known here. That model of journalism, I think, is under a really intense and new type of pressure in our country, but more broadly around the world.
Lionel:
AG, you have really seen a phenomenal success in terms of growth of subscriptions, the digital revenue last year was above a billion dollars. You’ve now hit 10 million subscribers and you’re looking at 15 million a target by 2025. First of all, where do you think this growth has come from? Some people say it was the Trump bump. I know you have views on that. Look at the past and then the future, where do you think the growth is going to come from?
AG:
I’ll say a couple of things. First, I will give you credit. The Financial Times was a real pioneer on the pay model. I think your institution was really generous in sharing some of your learnings with institutions like ours. We’ve tried to pass that on as more and more news organisations move to a subscription model. I think the subscription growth comes from quality. I think that it’s the most underestimated part of a healthy subscription strategy or a consumer revenue strategy. People are always asking me about the architecture of a paywall and marketing strategies and pricing strategies. I think at the end of the day, what matters more than anything else is having something worth paying for.
If you look at the folks that have successfully asked readers to pay, it’s the folks that have invested the most, even when it was hardest, into quality, into having journalism worth paying for. It’s places like the Financial Times, it’s places like the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. I’m aware that the Guardian has a different approach, but it’s that same commitment. Is what we offer good enough that you’re going to pull out your wallet to support it? the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, some of the magazines. First and foremost, I think the growth came from our refusal, even in our period of most sustained financial duress, to cut the newsroom.
We sold off every part of the New York Times that wasn’t the New York Times to keep the New York Times stable. Boston Globe, [unintelligible 00:15:48], our regional papers, our regional television stations, our magazines division, the Boston Red Sox, and more. Then when that wasn’t enough, we significantly, and I think by more than two-thirds, shrunk our business operations to keep the newsroom as flat as possible. I think all that investment in the news ultimately paid off. Consumers started to become more comfortable pulling out their wallets to pay for, not just goods online but for services online, like Spotify, Netflix. That happened to coincide with Trump’s election.
Everyone has regarded this as the Trump bump. I really regard Trump as an activating moment that in many ways, the groundwork had been laid prior to that. Trump represents a moment where a whole bunch of people in my country and probably around the world who weren’t paying attention to news woke up and said, “Maybe I should. It seems like the world’s getting pretty interesting. Maybe I should be reading up on it more.” That theory, it was definitely a minority view. I think it was really borne out by the fact that our next great bump was COVID. Another moment in which people feel like, “Ooh, I should probably be paying attention to the news.
It feels life or death in this moment.” That actually ended up being a much more substantial surge in growth. Then the third biggest surge of growth we saw was the war in Ukraine. The first land war in Europe since World War II. It felt like an extremely consequential moment. That’s where I think this growth has come from largely. Where’s it going? I think our industry, we’ve lost our historical memory a little bit on this question. At the peak of print in America, we had something 65 million Americans paying for a newspaper. The biggest news subscriptions were actually to the magazines, like to Time Magazine, to Newsweek, to US News, and World Report, and others.
If you added that all up, you had probably 200 million news subscriptions in our country. Do I think we’re going to get back up to that number here in the digital era? Maybe not, but I’m not sure we should accept that. The notion that a much larger country shouldn’t have the same percentage of people who feel some civic responsibility to remain informed about their communities and to develop a direct relationship with a news source that is worthy of their trust. To me, that is an enduring need. That’s what we should be as an industry trying to build back toward.
Alan:
The role of publisher of the New York Times, I’d like to understand, I think too many UK listeners, they’ll be puzzled by this. You have an executive editor underneath you that looks after the news pages. I take it you’re pretty hands-off in terms of news coverage. There’s obviously somebody looking after the business side. Explain your relationship to the editorial page. Who ultimately decides whether you’re going to back this candidate or that candidate? Is that ultimately your call?
AG:
Can I take a step back just a little bit? Basically, our model, which is widely shared in the US but is probably not the majority, is to split news and business. We have a CEO who has broad autonomy to run the business and company operations in the New York Times. We have an executive editor who has broad autonomy around the day-to-day of the news report. I regard myself as an essential partner to both. I’m their boss, but I also think part of what I can provide is a bit more of a long-term orientation because ultimately, we have someone extremely capable of thinking about this quarter’s earnings or this year’s budget or tomorrow’s paper.
I can step back and think on a 3-year timeline, a 5-year timeline, a 10-year, and sometimes even on a generational timeline. I think that triangle of leaders has served us very well. Why do we break it apart that way? To prevent business conflicts from interfering with news coverage. Famous classic example, Harvey Weinstein was one of our biggest and most loyal advertisers, which Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor had no idea about as they were pursuing the investigation that would ultimately bring him to justice. That’s why we’ve got that peculiar structure.
Then we have a second structure, which is not universally shared, which is we split our news operations from our opinion operations. I think that’s distinct, Lionel, from how you operated, for example. The same with you.
Lionel:
I was the enlightened despot in charge of both opinion and news.
AG:
[laughs] Careful what you wish for. The opinion editor who runs a much smaller team, so our executive editor, the news editor, runs about 2,000 journalists. Our opinion editor runs about maybe 150 is my best guess. The vast majority of their work is columns, columnists, and guest essayists, but they also produce editorials. With editorials, those largely represent the views of the editorial board, along with the opinion editor, along with me. I should say, coming from the tradition I came from, so I spent most of my career as a reporter, I came in with a bit more scepticism of that model.
One of the more significant changes I’ve made in my tenure is reducing the number of editorials from three a day to one a week. In part because in this moment in which the information ecosystem is so overwhelmed by opinion content, and particularly low-quality opinion content, punditry, I feel like the highest role an organisation like ours can play, because we have the resources still, is as a independent reporting operation.
Alan:
I’m going to ask you, I’m going to ask you, about the James Bennett essay, December 2023. James Bennett was the editorial page editor, and this very long essay, which was titled When the New York Times Lost Its Way, he says you asked him to resign over a piece he commissioned as editorial page editor in June 2020. He said that the Times’ problem has metastasised from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favor one side of the national bait to an impulse to shut down debate altogether. What was your reaction when you read that piece?
AG:
I’ll say a few things. It must have been a hard thing for him to be stewing on that for four years and feel compelled to create that narrative around his experience, so I don’t want to underestimate how hard that must have been for him. I really disagree with the fundamental characterisations that he landed at. That disagreement I don’t think is just because I’m a loyal defender of the New York Times, although I am a loyal defender of the New York Times, but because I just don’t think they’re borne out by the facts. On that core characterisation of, are we afraid to upset the left?
I would ask you to, as pretty close observers of the American media scene, whether you’ve seen any evidence that we are afraid to upset anyone at the New York Times. We have been attacked relentlessly by sections of the left for our coverage of Israel and Gaza, we have been attacked relentlessly from sections of the left of our coverage of trans issues, we have been attacked relentlessly by sections of the left for our coverage of the presidential election, and particularly Joe Biden’s age, where we have been really rigorous in trying to report out the true story of the degree of fitness at a moment in which a majority of Americans have profound concerns about it.
Then even looking more narrowly at that opinion world that James ran, it’s hard for me to reconcile his essay with the reality that today, four years after he was running the team, we have more conservative columnists, more columnists willing to publish heterodox views or really wade deep into controversial questions, more guest essays from conservatives, and are doing all that without the constant drumbeat of mistakes and controversies that marked his tenure. I should say that unfortunately marked his tenure.
Katie Kingsbury, the current opinion editor, has done a really terrific job of taking this big idea that we all believe in, which is the importance of diverse voices and robust debate to an independent news organisation, but also to a pluralist democracy, and getting the team behind it.
Alan:
The other phrase which Bennett had, which I’m hearing you push back on very firmly, the reality is he says that the Times is becoming the publication through which America’s progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist. That was the criticism over Trump, that you didn’t see that coming, that you were out of touch with America.
AG:
I don’t believe that was ever true. You know who else didn’t see Trump coming? The Trump campaign, which we know because we were on the phone with them on election night with them spinning their loss to say, “Look, he lost the election, but he’s not a loser.” It was closer than anyone thought. Point me to the American institutions that saw Trump coming from the very start. Our organisation has always been willing to publish information that will challenge any side. I think you know this. Even just look at some of the great criticisms of the organisation, you’ll see the left pushing on our coverage of the Iraq War, for example.
Was that another example of us being afraid to upset one side of the spectrum? None of this is to say that news organisations don’t make mistakes. We do make mistakes. I’m willing to engage in any conversation about whether some specific body of coverage represents a mistake. When the public has become so self-segregated into these ideological bubbles and encampments or identity-based bubbles and encampments, that people have really lost the ability to understand the motivation. The defining quality of others. The defining statement of the 2020 election to me was the incredulousness of both sides that the other side could have gotten that close to 50% of the vote.
You heard again and again the same language, “He couldn’t have gotten that many votes. I’ve never met a Biden voter.” “He couldn’t have gotten that many votes. I’ve never met a Trump voter.” Meanwhile, we have an organisation where we have reporters all on the ground from all sorts of different backgrounds all over the country and we are asking them to tell the story of America to itself and to the world, of course.
I could come up with a thousand forms of pushback on this, but I’ll just point to one that comes to mind, which is I have a colleague, a brilliant journalist, Jenny Medina, who had been covering the election in 2020 and had started to sniff out a meaningful shift in male Hispanic support for Trump, moving towards Trump. Which is totally anomalous with the direction of travel in recent presidential elections. She wrote a story about it. She heard no end of grief from the left because it wasn’t backed up by the polls, it wasn’t backed up by logic. Trump had been attacked using racially coded language to attack Hispanic immigrants.
He had gone to historic lengths to close the border and often demonise people trying to cross it in the process. She could just tell there was a real story there. She wrote the story. Sure enough, on election day, Trump comes darn close to winning the election again. A disproportionate amount of his overperformance was among Hispanic men. When I talk about independence, that’s really what I’m talking about. It’s the willingness to start with a thesis. The Hispanic votes largely going to go to Joe Biden as the polls have suggested. As you get deeper into the story, as more information that contradicts that comes at you, being willing to adjust and to listen deeply and to understand and ultimately to publish what you find.
[music]
Lionel:
This is Media Confidential and coming up, we’ll have more from our chat with AG Sulzberger.
Alan:
In this week’s Prospect Podcast, I’m joined by assistant editor Sarah Collins and two of our regular columnists, Alice Garnett who writes a column entitled Young Life and Sheila Hancock who writes a column entitled Long Life and we wanted to find out who’s had it tougher, the baby boomers or Generation Z?
Sheila Hancock:
I don’t understand this obsession with wanting to own a house. That’s a propaganda thing is that you fail if you don’t own a house. Never was an ambition of mine to begin with. Eventually, I bought a house for £3,000 and did it all up, but I was about 35 then.
Alan:
You just make it worse.
Sarah:
[laughs] £3,000.
Sheila:
I sold it for £80,000 and now it’s worth a million, this same house. It’s ludicrous what’s happened, but in my day, people from my background, you were jolly pleased if you got on a council estate. That’s now frowned on.
Alan:
Be sure to follow the Prospect Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and while you’re listening to the podcast, why not take out a digital subscription to Prospect and enjoy a one-month free trial to our digital content. You’ll immediately get full access to rigorously fact-checked, truly independent analysis and perspectives. There’s no commitment, you can cancel at any time. To take advantage of this offer, visit our website or go to your favorite search engine and search for Prospect Magazine subscription. Now back to our conversation with AG Sulzberger.
I want to come back to the problem of managing a newsroom in 2024. I speak as a recovering editor. We know that the AM Rosenthal model doesn’t work. The great editor, very strong-minded, his word, his writ ran large.
AG:
I should just say, Rosenthal was a famously imperious editor is I think what you’re referring to. Yes.
Alan:
Indeed. The newsroom these days it’s fragmented, it’s polarised, you’ve got a younger generation not necessarily prepared to take orders. Allegiance to the truth, well, yes, but my opinions matter too. That creates a lot of complexity for management. The other point, and I want to raise this, it’s sort of topical, but I think it’s important and it links to the growth story that you were talking about earlier, New York Times has done a very good job in looking at other platforms this autumn, where you’re running content from other publications like New Yorker Foreign Policy through there to attract other readers using yourself as a platform.
The other thing you’ve done is the use of outsiders, non-New York Times journalists to publish stories or contribute to stories on the New York Times website in the paper. There’s a recent example of this in Israel, involving non-journalists and it’s created quite a controversy as I see where a story, an investigation into sexual violence by Hamas alleged rape has been seriously challenged. I just want to ask you about the use of outside journalists, do you think that that needs to be approached a little more carefully? Because you would have thought the New York Times brand is so strong, so respected you don’t want to risk any dilution here.
AG:
Every newsroom that I’m aware of uses stringers to some extent and fixers to some extent. Stringers are folks who will sometimes produce byline pieces. Fixers are folks who will sometimes contribute to the journalistic process, sometimes in ways that are recognised with the byline or tagline, sometimes not. Of course, it’s essential that we’ve got high standards for verification and vetting of these folks. That’s imperative. As you know, we are in an era in which anything that anyone writes on the Israel-Gaza dispute is going to be fiercely contested by one side or the other. That’s because it’s effectively a zero-sum conflict. This is a really contentious issue to cover.
I think my colleagues deserve, they certainly have my deepest admiration for their extraordinary performance in covering it, even as they are attacked every day from both sides. I’ve had the very odd experience of watching people from my office window, chanting about our anti-Palestinian bias while standing under a billboard that they were seemingly unaware existed decrying our anti-Israel bias. With all the complaints we’ve gotten from the public, from political leaders and activists, from our own readers at times, the split has been almost even on the two sides. I will point out that this work was just recognised with the Polk Award.
They have done their best to tell this story fully and fairly. I think that that is, more than anything, what the world needs. A colleague of mine was musing to me that if we ever want to get past the anger and rage of the public conversation on this issue and actually make room for solutions and forward progress, there’s going to have to be a foundation for it built on independent reporting. Often our reporting is challenged, but increasingly, we’re actually seeing the journalists themselves challenged. We have one group right now that is vigorously contesting the legitimacy of someone we’ve used to assist with reporting because this is from the pro-Palestinian side.
Then we have another group, you may be aware, that’s been vigorously protesting a stringer we’ve used in Gaza for photography, who was named in a Polk Award, and contesting their legitimacy from the pro-Israeli side. This dynamic in which every word we write and every person there is contested is one that we have gotten used to. I will say, if your fundamental thought is that in an environment like that, we need to be really careful to make sure that everything we publish, will hold up to the most intense scrutiny. You’re absolutely correct.
Alan:
Thank you for that. The readers and listeners can see more in the long report in the Intercept. I think the New York Times has challenged elements of that story, but that explains the background to a degree. AG, the question I had in my rather long-winded effort to cover several bases here was, it’s about the younger generation and whether they, you think, and it doesn’t just apply to the Times, but do you think the younger reporters and journalists leave their opinions at the door? Or do you think that their opinions, in their mind, sometimes trump the interests of the institution?
AG:
I think it is undeniably true that there is an ascendant view among rising generations of journalists who are inclination towards a more advocacy-oriented model of journalism than the one that we practice at the New York Times and, the one that many others practice as well. That said, I have never bought the blank slate view of journalistic independence, which is that it’s on all of us to be blank slates, to never have a view. I don’t think that that’s how people work, I don’t think that’s how the world works, I don’t think that’s true with judges or doctors or any of the other institutions that you would want to be independent in the way that you would want journalism to be independent.
I think you have to wrap good process around that. You need to make very clear, especially now, and this is part of why I’m here with you and here in the speech and have been writing about independence, talking about this topic so much, because I don’t think it’s an argument that makes itself. On the process side, I think the New York Times has all sorts of processes. There’s not a single story that one person can get into the New York Times. Even the story you criticised had three bylines and probably 25 editors look at it before it got out.
Alan:
To be clear, I wasn’t criticising.
AG:
Okay. Sorry, the one that you raised. That’s good process. Preventing conflicts of interest. We don’t allow our journalists, for example, to donate to candidates or donate to causes or march in rallies. Some of those positions are more controversial than they were, but we believe that they’re essential to our bond of trust with our readers and to the legitimacy of our other journalists doing this work who misconduct from their colleagues. Or even not misconduct, even just behavior that would lead a reasonable person to question whether they’re biased is often used then to attack the work of their colleagues, not even just their own work.
I think the process is part of it. The second thing is I think we as an industry just need to talk about these values in a much more plain-spoken way. I think all the intellectual energy was being put into dismantling these cases. I think too many of us in leadership roles in journalism, we’re dismissive of them saying, “Oh, that’s not how we do it.” Instead of really anchoring like, “This is why independent journalism is still valuable, even in a moment in which the societal stakes are so high.” Not in spite of it, but because of the stakes, it actually only makes it more important that society benefits from independent actors.
One of the things that we’re getting much more comfortable at the New York Times telling people who join the New York Times is, “Hey, this place is going to drive you crazy some days.” Almost every day, you will or should find a piece that you don’t like in the New York Times. If you read the whole thing, you will. The reason for that is we publish 200 stories a day. We have columnists from conservative Republicans to liberal Democrats and everything in between, and so it would be impossible to agree with every piece. I can’t agree with every piece. Our opinion editor can’t agree with every piece. It’s actually by design you will be challenged every day.
One of the things that we’re getting better at is saying, “Are you okay with that? If you’re not, you’re not going to have a happy experience here at the Times. There’s plenty of places doing good, agenda-driven reporting on the causes that you care about. We’re a different type of news organisation. We really care about that independence.”
Alan:
I’ve just reviewed, for your own newspaper, your own history. There have been moments where the New York Times has been very transparent about issues. Occasionally, there are statements that are made. Until 2017, you had a public editor, a ombudsman who would stand independent from the newspaper. That role was then abolished. Do you regret? That was before your time, but do you regret that? Without such a person, how can you have that objectivity, objective lens on the journalism you’re doing?
AG:
It’s a really vanishingly rare role. First of all, it’s worth pointing out that our direct competitors, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, none of them have public editors. The interest tends to be applied sort of uniquely to the Times, for reasons I’m sure I should be flattered by. I think the notion that you can outsource accountability to one person who happens to be on your payroll just defies common sense. The media ecosystem, has hemorrhaged journalist jobs in recent years, but one of the few journalist jobs that’s actually very well represented is media critic.
There are all sorts of people out there that we can name them because they’ve written about all three of us over the years, who spend their days asking tough questions on behalf of the public while employed by another news organisation. I think that model, just on its face, makes more sense. Set that aside, I also think that notion of one person proved really problematic. We’ve had a couple of episodes that really underscored to me the downside of that model. We had the public editor really take our former editor to task for not pursuing a story, an odd story about a potential connection between a bank and the Trump campaign, the Alpha Bank and the Trump campaign.
There was a digital trail of connection that seemed to suggest that this may have been a channel in which Russia was communicating, getting its messages to the Trump campaign. It fits squarely into some of the concerns about potential ties between Trump and Russia of the era. Our editor felt like we didn’t have the story. We had the story first before anyone else. He felt very strongly that we could not nail the story down, that just it wasn’t there. We didn’t write the story. The story was then pushed to a bunch of other outlets and who all did pursue the story.
At which point our public editor came in and slapped our hand for missing such an important story, for sitting on a story that our readers deserved to know. Three or four years later, the story evaporates. The entire thing falls apart, really disastrously embarrassing corrections, even retractions at the Washington Post, at The Wall Street Journal, at CNN and others. Had Dean listened to the reader’s representative in that case, we would have made what would have been one of the more damaging mistakes of that era, particularly given how many people believed that the mainstream media was twisting the facts to try to paint the most negative portrait of Trump.
The other cases on the affirmative side, a generation before that, we were way ahead on a story about a really galling type of corporate misconduct. A type of corporate misconduct that the whole country deserved to know. Our public editor then at some point wrote a column about how we were fixated on this company and writing too much about it and it showed some bias towards this company. We should leave this poor company, Purdue, and this poor family, the Sacklers, alone. In that case, to our enduring regret, we backed off. If the public editor isn’t there to listen to, what is it there for? Of course, we backed off.
Anyway, when I look at those two cases together, I see way more value in having a bunch of tough-minded media critics who have a proven record of willingness to give the New York Times a hard time when we deserve it, and sometimes even when we don’t, rather than one person on the in-house payroll.
Alan:
I have just one very quick question. Are you a spelling bee person or a wire cutter person?
AG:
I am not a spelling bee person. My brain just doesn’t work that way. I love Connections and Wordle. Those two I try to hit every day, although I lost my streak on the business trip. The thing we’re trying to do there is to rebuild that old promise that newspapers used to have, which is first and foremost, we’re there for the news, but there are all sorts of other ways that we can make your days a little easier, a little brighter.
[music]
Lionel:
First of all, Alan, let’s get to the really serious bit. Wordle or Connections?
Alan:
I’m a Wordle man. It sometimes drives me up the wall, but I am a bit addicted. You?
Lionel:
Oh, I’m spelling bee, I’m afraid. I’ve moved beyond Wordle.
Alan:
That’s a new realm altogether. Anyway, what did you make of that?
Lionel:
It’s really very thoughtful. It’s almost as if he wants to cover every base. He’s an extremely reflective individual, maybe with one eye on that huge New York Times newsroom. They’ve got 2,000 journalists, many of which I suggested, particularly amongst the younger generation, have got very strong opinions. Managing that, obviously, it’s Joe Kahn, the editor, it’s his job too, but as publisher, he does have to tread a slightly tricky path, doesn’t he? In what he says, while upholding this brand that it’s all the news that’s fit to print. The facts matter.
Alan:
What I like about him, it’s the first time I’ve ever met him, though, obviously, he’s been on my radar for some time, is he is completely imbued in journalism. Clearly loves journalism, is really smart about journalism, and knows that his job is to make the journalism thrive. As he was speaking, I was struggling to think of a single publisher, maybe Rupert Murdoch in his prime, publisher or chief executive who has got that amount of fingertip sensitivity to journalism and a determination to protect it. I sensed we could have talked for three hours and he’d still be saying wise and insightful things about journalism. Do you think that’s fair at all?
Lionel:
I think there’s no question about it. He’s quite different in that sense from his father, who knew Arthur Sulzberger, who definitely knew a story and loved gossip and news, but AG is somewhat more reflective. I would also say he was very generous in offering some praise for other publications, including the Financial Times, who’s helped the New York Times with their business model. I’d like to just mention what he was saying in his speech, the Reuters lecture, which I thought was particularly impressive, where he said actually the measure of the integrity of a news organisation is whether they’re prepared to publish stories that they’re contested.
In other words, they go against the grain of what maybe your natural reader’s constituency wants. He said that we’re not in the business of essentially shielding readers from stories which may challenge them or they find upsetting. He cited Middle East and also the transgender issue. In that sense, he’s a very courageous man, I think.
Alan:
What did you think of his answer on James Bennett? Because essentially, what he’s saying is what James Bennett was saying, that you couldn’t put much of a cigarette paper between them, except that James Bennett says that the New York Times doesn’t live up to this promise. He was implying, didn’t quite say it, but implying that James Bennett didn’t quite match the high standards of editing that he has come to expect and has happened since Bennett left.
Lionel:
In a sense, Alan, given that AG basically fired James Bennett over this piece, let’s remember it was a piece which was published on the op-ed page by Senator Tom Cotton saying the feds should send the troops into the streets to deal with the Black Lives Matter protests. I thought it was the one time I think he bristled a bit and essentially said it, to coin a phrase, it was sour grapes on James Bennett’s part. He didn’t really get into the weeds of the debate, I think.
Alan:
What did you think of his answer on Gaza? Because he must have known we were going to ask him about that big piece in The Intercept. A lot of criticism on the New York Times from both sides, but a particularly coruscating piece about the big expose that the New York Times claimed to have done on what happened on October the 7th, which people have queried the authorship of.
Lionel:
I wasn’t completely impressed by that answer. He’s standing by the story as is the New York Times that there was mass violence, sexual assault against Israeli women by Hamas and the fighters who invaded on October the 7th. The issue that he didn’t really address was, when I put it to him, that the New York Times was using non-journalists on stories. He said, “All news organisations use fixers and stringers,” that’s freelancers. The point here is that the bylined reporters on the story with Jeffrey Gettleman were not journalists, they weren’t trained journalists. One was in the ex-Israeli Air Force.
There are a number of quite damaging quotes from them about they didn’t really have the material which supported the story. Since then, there has been evidence and accounts of violence against women, but it’s not quite the same as reported in the Times.
Alan:
The one thing that I suspect you and I disagree about, Lionel, was we asked him at the end about this question of marking their own homework. I think they’ve had a problem with one or two of their public editors. I extremely valued the role of the public editor on the Guardian. We called it a reader’s editor in terms of not marking our own homework so that if people want to criticise the paper for this or that, the editor can say, “You wouldn’t expect me to be objective about this and I would hand it over to the independent reader’s editor.” He didn’t agree about that and I expect you don’t either.
Lionel:
Alan, at the Financial Times, after the failure of Leveson, and I discussed this with the CEO, John Ridding at the time and senior colleagues, I said I don’t want a reader’s editor because I don’t want someone who’s essentially second-guessing me. Because what we will have and we need is a mechanism to deal with reader’s complaints, which is independent. Therefore I created and I drew up this blueprint, which actually worked for an editorial complaints commissioner.
Readers who felt they’d not got satisfaction from the FT editorial could appeal to this commissioner, who had then independent powers of investigation and would publish what could and were, in one or two occasions, quite painful accounts of what had not gone quite right. That was a different way of approaching the problem and I found it a better model than having a reader’s editor. There again, you and I do disagree on some things, Alan.
Alan:
We do, but those two models aren’t that different, I think. I think editors have to have the confidence to say, “If we screw up, we should be willing to submit ourselves to some kind of independent scrutiny.” Whether you call it what you called it or what we called it, it’s a similar idea, I think.
Lionel:
Yes, it’s a similar idea, except our model did not have weekly interventions in the form of published columns, which can encourage the reader’s editor to become a brand in their own right. Again, this is maybe a subject for a beer, Alan.
Alan:
[chuckles] The relevance here was listening to your question and his answer on Gaza, you thought actually there is something here. If this is going to be picked over publicly at some point, the New York Times is going to have to satisfy its readers. Because in 2024, it’s all about winning trust, and sometimes the readers are going to be sceptical that you’re being completely open, unless you’ve got this independent mechanism and come in and look at the evidence. Anyway, he’s definitely a guy to watch and he’s written a very thoughtful long essay in the Columbian Journalism Review about journalistic process.
He did a fascinating interview with David Remnick. He’s just an interesting, thoughtful guy to have at the helm of a great newspaper. It was a pleasure to sit down and talk to him.
Lionel:
Actually, I asked at the Wincott Foundation, which organises and sponsors annual business and financial journalism awards, to put the lecture on our website at the wincottfoundation.co.uk. Because I think lots of journalists should read that lecture and chew it over. It’s good stuff.
Alan:
They should also read Gary Younge’s lecture, which is summarised on the UK Press Gazette side. In Gary’s perception, he’s one of our leading black journalists, the narrow social background of journalists today, and the fact that it’s becoming a very, not just a middle-class profession, an upper-middle-class profession. Two good interviews to read. Lionel, where are you next week?
Lionel:
I’m in Hill Country, Texas, where Lyndon Johnson had a big ranch. I’m cycling, but also following, of course, the presidential campaign. Work with pleasure.
Alan:
I will look forward to seeing you then in your Lycra. [chuckles]
Lionel:
Steady on, Alan.
Alan:
Thank you for listening to Media Confidential, brought to you by Prospect Magazine and Fresh Air, and the producer is Martin Poyntz-Roberts.
Lionel:
You can send any questions or comments to Media Confidential at prospectmagazine.co.uk or get in touch on X, formerly Twitter. We are @mediaconfpod.
Alan:
Remember to listen and follow Media Confidential wherever you get your podcasts and join us next week in Lycra or not for more invaluable analysis.
