Arthur ochs sulzberger jr politics1

Kennedy summoned the Times publisher to the White House to excoriate him. It had been Times practice in the past to be cozily genial with the president, and not to rock the boat. Punch was shocked, then annoyed, and finally defiant. Other major news organizations were providing their readers with a much more unquestioning account of what was happening.

It was as though the press were still in World War II mode with virtual censorship. If the Times was reporting critically, these other news outlets had the cover to do the same. Many, many years later, Columbia University gathered together a group of journalists who had won Pulitzer Prizes for their Vietnam coverage. They collectively sent over a bottle of Champagne with their thanks.

This is the latest accepted revisionreviewed on 6 November American journalist born Mount Kisco, New YorkU. Gail Gregg. Gabrielle Greene. Early life and education [ edit ]. Career [ edit ]. Awards and honors [ edit ]. Affiliations [ edit ]. Activism [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. The Awl. Archived from the original on July 1, Retrieved July 4, The New York Times.

October 24, The New Yorker. Retrieved February 17, Archived from the original on December 21, ISSN Retrieved December 14, Retrieved December 31, Tufts University. April 9, Retrieved January 22, March 27, Sulzberger Jr". March 6, Your new audio app features audio versions of articles from other publications such as Foreign Policy or the New Yorker.

I find this kind of revolutionary as you are publishing content from other news outlets on your own platform. That model came out of Audma small audio product we purchased in It was beloved by many, myself included, for your ability to catch up on all this great magazine work while doing the dishes, cleaning the house and going for your morning run.

Many local newspapers, including the one where you started your careerhave been decimated by cuts and we are also seeing layoffs at bigger titles like the Washington Post. As a citizen, do you find this problematic in the light of your own success? I get versions of this question quite a lot, including from our own staff, and I'm going to push back on it really strongly.

They are a set of existential pressures that are stemming from the decimation of the legacy business models and the replacement of those with the much more economically challenging digital options. We are seeing it in every country right now as your own Digital News Report documents. I'll push back on your premise even further. I actually think that people may be overstating the challenge the Washington Post is going through.

If you had told them 10 years ago that they would have a newsroom with hundreds more journalists and maybe two million more subscribers, they would have taken that in a heartbeat, even if it involves some painful moments along the way. So I think the Washington Postwhich continues to produce amazing work, is one of the success stories along with the Wall Street Journal and the Times.

What is happening is basically a separation between national media and local media. After a decade in which both basically fell at the same rate, you can just see that the decline of national media stalled, and then it started to creep back up. We are all still smaller than we were 20 years ago, but we all have been growing back up. The lesson is that if you continue to invest in that fundamental journalistic promise, the economies of scale basically will support national media in the US.

So I think local is its own very discrete, very profound challenge. But I think our industry needs to think bigger. At the peak of print something like 65 million Americans subscribed to a newspaper. On average, they subscribed to almost two newspapers. We are not even sniffing at Hulu or Netflix or Amazon Prime. We are still many factors smaller than those players.

What would you say to them? The first thing I would say is that I care less about someone subscribing to the Times than I care about them subscribing to a news organisation worthy of their trust. We need more engaged citizens in this country and in our world. Rosenthal stands as the quintessential New York Times executive editor. Talented, insecure and heavy-handed, Rosenthal led the newspaper from to From the early days of his career Rosenthal believed the Times had to stand apart from any other newspapers and keep its aspirations to quality and objectivity at a time of social upheaval, with the rise of the civil rights movement and the protests against the Vietnam war.

In the summer of Rosenthal, then-managing editor, was distressed by the Times coverage from the tumultuous Democratic National Convention. As the US goes through another period of social upheaval, the newspaper has been criticised, often from opposite arthurs ochs sulzberger jr politics1, for its news coverage of contested issues. These kinds of controversies are much more public today, with readers criticising you on social media and employees voicing their concerns on Slack.

Is it more difficult to deal with these issues than it was in the past? The tension of keeping a news organisation independent and making sure that our report lives up to that promise every day is not new. That is something that generations of journalists have grappled with. Because audiences believe that what they broadcast matters, people are always trying to push them in one way or the other.

But I do think that the dynamic has changed in recent years. Social media did three things to break society into many sometimes overlapping, sometimes warring tribes: it created the conditions in which it was very easy to organise into like-minded populations; it created the conditions in which the most radical views rise; and it helped those people mobilise.

This is why the editorial decisions of news organisations like mine are going to be continually contested from one side or the other, and often from both sides or every side all at once. This is certainly a challenge. But we are committed to meeting that fundamental promise of independent journalism, without fear of favour, even in the context of the challenge that comes often from the outside.

I like your emphasis on process and standards as a way to ensure independence and freedom from bias. How should news organisations fight this threat? Some of our critics have legitimate grievances, and we have to be open to hearing those grievances. A news organisation that shuts itself off from public criticism is a news organisation that's about to make big mistakes because the criticism helps keep us honest.

But not all criticism, and not even all good criticism, is aimed really at correcting the record. Often it's aimed at intimidating independent reporting. So our job is to help give the staff confidence to do those stories that explore unpopular positions and wade into controversial areas that challenge conventional wisdom. The good news is that journalists are a pretty tough bunch.

But at the same time we as an institution also have to show support for that work. Some of our critics have legitimate grievances. So our job is to help give the staff confidence to do stories that explore unpopular positions. What would you say to critics? I don't subscribe to the belief that independence is the same as balance. Balance is actually a somewhat insidious word in our industry because it suggests that the truth is in the middle.

Are we covering the whole story? And are we doing it fairly? This is a particularly challenging arthur ochs sulzberger jr politics1 to cover. First of all, just the awfulness of it, the loss of life on all sides. And then the challenge of covering these two populations, both of which have legitimate claims and are locked in an effectively zero-sum conflict in which both sides feel an existential risk.

In this context, hearing from the other side in an empathetic way and reading sceptical coverage of your own side are often viewed as increasing the risk that you face. But I do believe that in a conflict like this, any independent, fair, complete coverage would inevitably make both sides angry, and our job is to try to tune that out as much as possible, and instead labour every day to make sure that we are covering the whole story as fully and fairly as possible.

This is a year of elections. Is there anything journalists should do differently when covering an authoritarian candidate? My answer is going to be independent journalism and I would say there is a risk in two different approaches on either extreme. On one side, there is the risk of the old sort of the-truth-is-in-the-middle model. And if we are being honest, some of the criticism of mainstream media as being too euphemistic and too instinctively even-handed in coverage is fair.

The truth isn't always in the middle and one of the best things to come out of the digital transformations in media is a much more direct, plain-spoken writing style. On the other side, there is a risk in the media leaning into becoming the opposition to these candidates and becoming emotionally invested and trying to undermine them rather than to help the public understand their policies, their backgrounds and the potential concerns those may raise, how they defy long-standing norms, how they challenge democratic conventions For me, the path forward is to fully and fairly convey this and do it unapologetically and with clear language while understanding that doing so may lead some people not to find it too credible.

We are just stating the truth fully and plainly, but we are also doing that in a way that is unemotional. We are going to continue to report fully and fairly, not just on Donald Trump but also on President Joe Biden. He is a historically unpopular incumbent and the oldest man to ever hold this office.

Arthur ochs sulzberger jr politics1

They are different. But they are both true, and the public needs to know both those things. And if you are hyping up one side or downplaying the other, no side has a reason to trust you in the long run. But my timeline is full of complaints about controversial articles. It's going to be impossible to articulate an exact line. Our editors are much more interested in the exploration of ideas than in just publishing political polemics.

We need arguments to be backed up by facts and be made in good faith. Of course, evaluating all those things is the challenge, and this is why I think it's so important that our profession is staffed by professionals. Reporting is a profession, and the judgement that is built in that profession really matters in making these decisions.