Joe Kahn will take over as Executive Editor of The New York Times next week. The newspaper is enjoying a record number of digital subscriptions and a new crop Pulitzer Prizes.
Kahn needs to replace a legend, and corral a contentious newsroom with more than 1,700 journalists aEUR”, the largest news staff an American newspaper has ever boasted.
“The days of executive editors, where you could appoint one and decide which six stories would go on Page 1 and then kind of slam down that gavel at that end and that was kind of the essence of this job aEUR”, Kahn stated in an hour-long interview at The Times’ Manhattan headquarters.
Kahn’s immediate predecessors were pioneering aEUR” the first female executive editor and African American executive editor in the newspaper’s history. His appointment was logical and well planned, without any drama.
Kahn joined the paper in 1998. He rose through the ranks to become a reporter and an international editor. Since 2016, he has been the managing editor or second-in command, under Dean Baquet. He prepared him to succeed him. Kahn also developed a relationship with A.G. Sulzberger (41-year-old heir to The Times’ controlling family and its publisher).
Kahn managed to guide the paper in a calm manner. He has created a series of digital-friendly changes that have allowed editors to cover stories from all time zones. Teams now cover news events as they occur; stories are published in apps and online before printed editions; new teams present The Times’ reporting in new ways. These include podcasts, podcasts and videos, charts, cartoons and gifs, newsletters and classroom texts.
The Print Room, as it is known in archaic terms, was where we spoke. To honor the paper’s hardcopy legacy, the walls are lined with historic front pages. It is rarely used. It is located on the 12th floor, and it houses a more formal exhibit that focuses on the paper’s past.
This article reflects both our interview and discussions with eight Times colleagues. They asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on this story’s behalf.
Leo Kahn, Kahn’s dad, was a successful businessman from Boston. He transformed the family grocery store into a supermarket chain, before Staples, an office supply company, was launched.
Leo Kahn, however, had already earned a journalism degree at Columbia University and worked as a reporter for a year. Joe Kahn decided to take that route. Kahn, a Harvard student editor, once said to C-Span that he hoped to “try my hand at journalism aEUR”, print journalism, aEUR” sometime. “I won’t be content until I do.”
Kahn was hired by The Dallas Morning News. He was a local reporter in Plano and sought a more fast-paced, exciting path to the top of journalism. After completing a master’s degree in East Asian Studies at Harvard, he returned to China to cover the student protests in Tiananmen square in spring 1989.
He was soon turned in by an informant after he drove to a remote village on the outskirts Beijing to report. Kahn recalls that the police “swooped in while I was interviewing someone and took me to a local police station.” After being interrogated back in Beijing by state security agents, he was told that he had violated martial laws.
Kahn stated that she remembers feeling “very unmoored” at that time. “I was there alone. My editors were in Dallas, 8,000 miles away. We didn’t even have email at the time. We didn’t even own a fax machine.”
Kahn was expelled from the country. In later years, he’d be sent back to China for The Wall Street Journal and The Times. He would also share a Pulitzer Prize. He’d be held in detention repeatedly.
The Chinese Communist Party began to fire or expel reporters from The Times, Bloomberg News, and The Journal over revelations about how the political elites diverted large sums of money to their families. The Times’ coverage of China is now based mainly from Seoul.
“We won’t change our approach. Kahn stated that we cover every story aggressively and report deep and hard on all of them. “And if they get back in, then we’ll continue to report both big enterprise stories and breaking news from China. We’ve already said that to them.”
Kahn used the word “independent 14 times in our conversation to describe The Times. I wanted to know why.
Kahn claimed that the paper was not a mission other than to provide high-quality journalism free from corporate, government, and partisan influence. Kahn, however, admitted a wider agenda when asked. “You cannot be committed to independent journalism while being agnostic about democracy.” The Times’ most recent brand advertising campaign also features the word “independent”.
He said that The Times, like its top rivals NPR and The Washington Post, is more focused on threats to democracy both at home and abroad, as opposed to NPR or The Washington Post. This threat in the U.S. is asymmetrical and comes from the political right. It includes those who support Trump and his followers. He said that such reporting would only feed the newspaper’s Republican- and conservative-haters. He said that the Times must still cover it.
The New York Times cannot exist in Hungary. It can’t exist even in China. He said that it couldn’t exist in Russia. It can only exist in the context of respecting the role of a high-quality, nonpartisan press in functioning democracy, where we are protected by the rule of law, and where we work directly to our readers and not for any political power or institution.
“So independent journalism is not possible in a free society. We are not impartial as to whether this [nation] becomes non-free.”
He noticed that there were many stories about the same question both in the U.S. as abroad.
The Trump years saw a surge in digital subscriptions to The Times, partly due to the readers’ concern about Trump’s presidency and a desire for more information about it. Kahn warns that not all political news is about perceived threats to democracy. He points out the election of the Republican governor of Virginia. Kahn stated that the outcome was reflective of the state’s political sentiment and the paper’s reporting confirmed this.
Dean Baquet, a charismatic newsroom chief is well-known for his reporting and oversight of richly detailed investigations at The Los Angeles Times. He was also known for resisting budget-slashing corporate chiefs when he was the top editor at The Los Angeles Times.
Baquet, now 65, is taking over a new editorial position at the paper. This will allow for investigative reporting that can be shared with local news media.
Baquet was a strong ambassador for The New York Times, and journalism outside of the newsroom. Inside, he led by cheerleading, direction, and suasion.
Kahn is measured. Contained. Quieter in making his mark.
Kahn stated, “By virtue o getting the job I’ll assume some of the responsibilities to represent The Times institutionally as well as the values of our newsroom,”
Kahn stated that he was focused on creating a team of collaborative leaders, which would not rely solely on him but instead on the knowledge and experience of its members. Marc Lacey, and Carolyn Ryan were his two replacements.
There are still many twisty problems. Kahn, despite his efforts in digital realms is trying to create a sense of restraint for journalists working under him online. The paper’s leadership released new guidelines for social media in spring, a process that was almost complete before Elon Musk bought Twitter.
Readers have seen Pulitzer Prize-winners Maggie Haberman, Nikole Hannah Jones and others arguing aEUR” rhetorically with their online critics. Taylor Lorenz, a former Times digital media reporter, is a loud presence on Twitter. She often faces sexist and intense backlash like Hannah-Jones and Haberman. Recently, she left for The Washington Post and criticized The Times for its sexist attitude about social media. (It is fair to say that male colleagues with smaller Twitter followers have been privately criticized for their tweets but with less public attention.
The new policy requires that the paper monitors the tweets of its journalists to ensure they are not criticizing one another or their work. According to Mediaite, Lorenz said that it was “counterproductive, harmful to journalists, particularly those who use the internet to report,” according to Mediaite. She deleted the tweets later. Hannah-Jones has been subject to racial backlash and other criticisms. She has stated to colleagues that she does not feel the paper is sufficiently supportive of her position in public.
Lorenz mocked Haberman at The Times on the company’s internal message boards. Haberman and Lorenz also clashed over Twitter after she left. The Washington Post was in a similar situation this month. A male reporter was called out by a female colleague after she retweeted a sexist joke and another Post journalist criticizing her response. The editors rushed to tell the newsroom that they wanted their colleagues to engage constructively.
Kahn said that most of his colleagues were relieved to be officially disincentivised from spending too much time online.
Kahn stated that the Twitter ecosystem had “began to occupy quite a bit of our mind,” but declined to identify anyone. They might have felt that they were being put under pressure to be part of the Twitter ecosystem and define themselves.
He said that the criticism was “dominated” by a small group of hyper-engaged, but partisan users. Sometimes, too much feedback can lead to a loss of perspective on the larger audience. The paper will also support staff who are subject to online harassment through the creation of a new policy.
Rukmini Callimachi, the newspaper’s former terrorism reporter, was one of its Twitter stars over the years.
Kahn encouraged her to rise at the international desk. She was largely responsible for her quick-witted Twitter analysis of terror attacks that gained her hundreds and thousands of followers.
The podcast series “Caliphate,” which she won for her podcast on ISIS, was based primarily on lies from its key source. Journalists working on it ignored red flags. She was given the awards back and was then shifted to another project.
Her colleagues now view her as a cautionary tale, rather than a model.
Kahn doesn’t say that social media is prohibited, but he said that his journalists can go to Substack and other sites if they wish to be known for their one-liners and off-the-cuff comments.
He stated that Twitter’s value, as well as social media in general, and journalism in general, will be determined by the quality of the New York Times’ reporting. We don’t want people who have huge followings on Twitter, but are unable to deliver.
George Floyd’s assassination in 2020 and the subsequent protests for justice caused chaos in newsrooms and cities across the globe. They revealed at The Times a significant divide, but not only along racial and gender lines.
The Times journalists took to Twitter to vent their anger over the following months. Three of these episodes resulted in the resignations of three prominent journalists.
After a storm of internal criticism, James Bennet was fired as editor of the paper’s editorial page. This was in response to an op-ed published by a Republican senator, calling for troops to be deployed to the scene of the Floyd murder riots.
Baquet urged Donald McNeil to resign after it emerged that he had been rebuked earlier for using a vicious, racist slur in response to a student asking him about its use on social networks.
Andy Mills was a star podcast producer who helped to create “Caliphate.” He left after being accused of mistreatment of women largely in his earlier work at New York Public Radio. Mills had apologised for his behavior, but denied it to The Times. Mills and McNeil both left early last year.
I asked Kahn his view of these departures from the past.
Kahn said that he would not get involved in any details. He said that the newspaper must be accessible to people of all backgrounds and reiterated its commitment to diversity and equity in its staff and coverage.
Kahn stated that “we don’t have the space or patience to accommodate people who aren’t on board with this program.” They can also work elsewhere if this is the case.
Kahn, a man of privilege, said that his colleagues were right to make changes in the culture of the newsroom.
He said, “We are not lowering our journalistic standard at all.” “We are raising the standards for what it means to contribute to the workplace culture that we need.”
