{"id":252744,"date":"2022-04-20T12:40:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-20T12:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=251838"},"modified":"2022-04-20T12:40:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T12:40:00","slug":"new-editor-at-the-times-faces-the-same-old-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2022\/04\/20\/new-editor-at-the-times-faces-the-same-old-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"New editor at the Times faces the same old questions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Note<\/strong>: This was originally published as<\/a> the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday, the New York Times<\/em> named a new executive editor<\/a>. A.G. Sulzberger, the newspaper’s publisher (the fourth member of the Sulzberger family to hold that title) said Joseph F. Kahn<\/a> has been given the role, and will replace Dean Baquet, who held the position for eight years. Kahn, 57, is a former international and managing editor of the paper, and also a Pulitzer Prize-winning former China correspondent. He starts his new job in June. A profile in New York<\/em> magazine describes Kahn<\/a> as “the ultimate inside man” at the Times<\/em>, someone for whom being named to the top job was almost a foregone conclusion. But some believe his status as a long-time company man could make it difficult for him to navigate the political and cultural challenges the paper faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, wrote in a piece about Kahn’s appointment<\/a> that the choice of a new executive editor has drawn even more scrutiny than it usually would, because “the residue of the Trump years, and fears that the former president will return for another campaign, have put the Times<\/em> in the bull\u2019s-eye of the journalistic debates over objectivity and both-sides coverage.” In picking Kahn, Pope argues that<\/a> the paper has sent a clear message that it “has no plans to rethink its approach.” Sulzberger tried to describe the paper’s approach to its coverage of Trump and other related topics in 2018, saying<\/a>: “We won’t be baited into becoming ‘the opposition.’ And we won\u2019t be applauded into becoming ‘the opposition.'” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What those within the paper see as a commitment to independence is seen by some<\/a> outside the Times <\/em>as a failure to address reality. Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU, wrote in 2018<\/a> that some \u201cwant Times<\/em> journalists to see what they see\u2014an assault on democratic institutions, the corruption of the American Republic.” Inside the Times<\/em>, however, Rosen says these kinds of people “are perceived as a threat.” The paper’s piece on Kahn’s appointment says the Times <\/em>is<\/a> “grappling with shifting views about the role of independent journalism in a society divided by harsh debates over political ideology and cultural identity.” But Rosen said this should read<\/a>: “The Times <\/em>is struggling with a model of political coverage that assumes a rough symmetry between the two parties at a time when one of the two has turned anti-democratic.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch, said Kahn’s viewpoint<\/a> on the objectivity question appears to be very close to Baquet’s, based on a speech Kahn gave in 2017, when he was assistant managing editor. At the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s annual gala, Kahn said some of the paper’s readers<\/a> “want us to more forcefully confront a president they see as a threat to democracy and American power,” but that the managers of the Times <\/em>“have decided it is not in our journalistic or business interest to do that.” For those kinds of decisions, Dan Gillmor, who runs a journalism lab at Arizona State University in Phoenix, said the Times<\/em><\/a> <\/em>“will be remembered as a great news organization that willingly served the people who hated the American republic.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to Kahn’s appointment, Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the Times<\/em>‘ award-winning 1619 Project, said on Twitter<\/a>: “I\u2019ve been thinking more and more that newsrooms need to hold an all-staff meeting where they invite democracy experts & historians in & really do a massive reset of how we are covering what\u2019s happening in our country right now. It\u2019s not about partisanship but covering reality.” She added that<\/a> she believes “we will look back and be appalled at the failures of journalism in this period of clear and in my lifetime, unprecedented, attacks on freedom of speech and our democratic institutions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commitment that the Times<\/em> and other newspapers have to the principle of objectivity has come under fire in recent years, including from Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Times <\/em>reporter, in a piece in 2020<\/a>. “Since American journalism\u2019s pivot many decades ago from an openly partisan press to a model of professed objectivity,” Lowery wrote, “the mainstream has allowed what it considers objective truth to be decided almost exclusively by white reporters and their mostly white bosses.” The contours of acceptable debate, he said<\/a>, “have largely been determined through the gaze of white editors. The views and inclinations of whiteness are accepted as the objective neutral.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his piece on Kahn’s appointment, Pope notes that recent decisions<\/a> by the Los Angeles Times<\/em> and the Washington Post<\/em> “to fill their own open executive-editor positions with people from outside their organizations (and outside a succession of white men)” led some to hope that the Times might also look to break with tradition in that regard, but it clearly chose not to do that. One reason for this decision could be that things seem to be going so well for the paper of late, at least from a business perspective. “Ultimately, it was the Times<\/em>\u2019 financial and editorial successes under Baquet, Kahn, and their colleagues that mitigated the need for a leadership gambit,” Pope writes<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sulzberger acknowledged as much in his note to Times<\/em>‘ staff on Tuesday<\/a>, when he said that \u201csome will interpret this promotion as a sign of confidence in our current path\u201d and added emphatically: \u201cThat\u2019s true. Under Dean and Joe, the Times<\/em> has grown stronger in virtually every way.\u201d Whether those strengths include the ability to put aside a doctrinaire approach to objectivity and consider the threats to democracy on its doorstep remains to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s more on the Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sturdy<\/strong>: In New York<\/em> magazine, Shawn McCreesh describes how two former executive editors of the Times<\/em>\u2014Howell Raines and Jill Abramson\u2014”self-destructed spectacularly in public after losing the faith of the Sulzberger family,” but says that this fate seems unlikely for Kahn<\/a>. “He is the ultimate inside man, so sturdy, disciplined, and reverential to the mission of the Times<\/em> that the very notion of him self-destructing seems improbable.” Kahn, says McCreesh, is “a fabulously wealthy Bostonian,” who is arguably a throwback to a previous generation of Times editor\u2014like Bill Keller, the son of a Chevron CEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steel<\/strong>: After returning to New York in 2008 from China, Kahn helped launch the Times<\/em>\u2019 Chinese-language website, a large financial investment at a difficult time for the company. In 2012, the site published an investigation into the hidden wealth of China\u2019s ruling class, and the Chinese government blocked access to the site from within the country (it remains blocked today). Sulzberger told the <\/a>Times<\/a> <\/em>the episode was an illustration of Mr. Kahn\u2019s commitment to journalistic independence. \u201cIt was a really remarkable moment where you learned a lot about the steel in that guy\u2019s spine,\u201d the publisher said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History<\/strong>: In 2019, Amber A’Lee Frost wrote for CJR about<\/a> “Why the Left Can’t Stand the New York Times<\/em>.” The paper, she said, is “the flagship publication for liberal triumphalism; it holds the line of Francis Fukuyama\u2019s ‘End of History’\u2014the notion that all serious ideological conflict crashed to a halt with the suspension of the Cold War, with very little at stake in future political disputes beyond regional trade accords and fine-tuning of currency regimes.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other notable stories<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CNN+, the news network’s new streaming digital service, appears to be doomed, according to a report from Axios<\/a>. “Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN’s longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward,” Sara Fischer reported, based on interviews with five unnamed sources. Executives at the news network are said to be frustrated that new leadership “is moving quickly to dismantle what they see as an eventual lifeline for the cable network.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor Lorenz, who writes about digital culture for the Washington Post<\/em>, revealed the identity of the woman<\/a> behind a right-wing account called Libs of TikTok, which has promoted attacks on LGBTQ teachers. “The account has emerged as a powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage among the right,” Lorenz wrote. She was criticized by a number of commentators, including Glenn Greenwald and Ben Shapiro, for “doxxing” or revealing the identity of the woman without her permission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The media “still haven\u2019t learned how to cover the GOP threat to democracy,” Jennifer Rubin, a columnist for the Washington Post<\/em>, argues in a recent column<\/a>. “Not one of the five major Sunday talk shows mentioned the revelation that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) had supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election despite no evidence of fraud,” she writes. “Multiple news outlets have dedicated themselves to covering democracy, yet coverage has not changed much. Days can go by without national newspapers or cable TV programming mentioning the coup attempt or voting suppression.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latvian Public Broadcasting interviewed Kirill Martynov<\/a>, the editor of a Russian news outlet called Novaya Gazeta<\/em>, an independent publisher that was forced to leave Russia and now publishes on a site based partially in Latvia. “A ban on the professional activity of journalists has been introduced in Russia,” Martynov told the Latvian news outlet. “Therefore, although we in Russia have not closed but suspended our work, we thought it would be helpful to set up a parallel platform in which we could now talk freely about important and worrying topics.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Chinoy writes for CJR about how<\/a> former president Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 changed both the political and media landscape. “The coverage was arguably almost as important as the details of the diplomacy,” he writes. “It transformed American and international perceptions of China, generated the public support Nixon needed to change US policy, and laid the groundwork for the Chinese government\u2019s gradual moves to open the country to greater coverage by American media. But while the outlines of the Nixon trip are familiar, the story of how that momentous event was covered is much less well-known.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A US appeals court has ruled that “scraping” of websites\u2014copying publicly available data, something often done by journalists and other researchers\u2014is not a breach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, TechCrunch <\/em>reported<\/a>. The ruling came in a long-running case launched by LinkedIn, which wanted to stop a rival company from pulling information from public profiles on LinkedIn. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court<\/a> last year but was sent back to the original appeals court. TechCrunch called the ruling “a major win for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nieman Journalism Lab writes about the first investigative report<\/a> from the newly-formed Redacci\u00f3n Regional collaborative project in Central America. The project, whose name means \u201cregional newsroom\u201d in Spanish, was formed to produce journalism that examines how Central American governments are \u201cattacking their own democracies,\u201d Nieman says. It\u2019s made up of four newsrooms: La Prensa Gr\u00e1fica in El Salvador, Contracorriente in Honduras, No-Ficci\u00f3n in Guatemala, and Divergentes in Nicaragua, along with Drom\u00f3manos, a production company that works with newsrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Letizia Battaglia, a photographer who chronicled years of Sicilian Mafia bloodshed in Palermo, Italy, died on Wednesday at her home in Palermo, the New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a>. She was 87. “Ms. Battaglia went to work for the Palermo newspaper L\u2019Ora in the 1970s, during the turbulent years known as the second Mafia Wars, when mobsters from the town of Corleone muscled in on Palermo crime gangs,” the Times <\/em>wrote. “The gangland war felled hundreds of Mafiosi but also law enforcement officers, prosecutors and politicians. Ms. Battaglia and the photographer Franco Zecchin, her companion in life, were often first on the scene because they had an illegal police scanner.”<\/p>\n

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Note: This was originally published as the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer On Tuesday, the New York Times named a new executive editor. A.G. Sulzberger, the newspaper’s publisher (the fourth member of the Sulzberger family to hold that title) said Joseph F. Kahn has been given … <\/p>\n

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