Times. He is interviewed by journalist jon allsop. After words is a weekly Interview Program with relevant guess who was top nonfiction authors about their latest work. Work, they would rather do just about anything else. So what induced you to want to write a book about the times . Good question. First, thanks for having me on the show. You know, i have always admired and wanted to work for the New York Times since i was a student in college and one of the books i read is as a college student, i think pretty early on was gay talese, his book at the times, and its something i always thought about the important you raise a really good point in your question. Im writing a history. So basically this book goes from 1977 through 2016. There are a bunch of advantages of that. For one thing, im not, for the most part, writing about people who are there, or to put it more directly. Writing for people i work with or about a few exceptions. But generally thats really the case. But more than that, in terms of approaching a project like this, there was a level of candor from the people that i was speaking to because they were gone. And also access to documents that i dont think i would have if i was writing about the present, if i was writing contemporaneous book about the times. I dont see a way to do it. While i was still working there, and i dont think i would want to do it actually, im finding as much as i expected, and maybe more so that the benefit of time has really been critical in terms of assessing what is important, what matters, what doesnt. But also getting to the behind the scenes story of what was going on over these past 30, 40 years. Yeah, obviously, you mentioned that its been a history and mostly it doesnt concern people who are still at the paper and therefore your colleagues. But you are, of course, a times insider. You do work that, you know. Do you think that was a Net Advantage for you writing the book . Do you think in some ways you might have had an easier time if you were approaching it from the Vantage Point of an outside reporter or researcher . How do you how do you sort of weigh the the advantages and disadvantages of that . Yeah, i think thats a great question. There are advantages in terms of knowing the people from the inside, having a sense of the culture. Its probably easier to get telephone calls return. I think it helps that i havent worked in the main office since 2002. I could see that the both sides, i think if youre coming from the outside, it might be harder to get the cooperation i got. So when i first started this project or first thought of it, the first thing i did was go to the publisher. At the time, Arthur Sulzberger jr, and asked if he would talk to me, cooperate on a book like this. And yeah, i think you said let me think about it. I think he got back to me about a month and what he said to me was, i have decided that i will cooperate with you. I will sit down and give you all the time you want and do the best i can with my memory and reconstruct the important events of these past decades. He said, but im not going to tell anyone else what to do. This is not an official times book. Youre on your own. You know, i dont expect everyone. Well talk to you so. But what i learned and what i should or probably realized the time is that once the publisher agreed to talk to me, pretty much everyone else did. Right. Because they whether it was implicit or explicit, they wanted to be part of the project, tell their story. And i dont mean to sound starry eyed, but make sure the book was as completed as good as possible. Id like to think that. So as a result, pretty much everyone i wanted to talk to sat down, talk to me and share documents. Now. Would that have happened if i were an outsider . Maybe. I dont know. I mean, gay talese, when he did his book back in 69, he he had been at the paper for about two years, and he left the paper afterwards. So he did it. Thats what he did it. He was already gone. If he had a foot in both in both camps that way. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned the gay talese book is as an inspiration for you. I guess one thing i was curious about reading it is the time span that you cover in the book starts more or less. In 1976 with the end a nation of Abe Rosenthal to executive editor, it ends more or less in 2016, with the election of donald trump. You sort of mentioned, i guess, why it finishes when it does. You know, you wanted to make this a history and not a not too much about current events, i guess. But, you know, why did you sort of choose that aperture on on the whole, why does it start in in 1976 specifically . I mean, Abe Rosenthal had already been in charge of the paper at that point. You know, for a number of years, unless im mistaken, or do you write like that . Im sorry. Yeah. He he had been managing editor. I a couple of reasons i wanted a manageable timeframe. Gates lease is bookended in abstract and i remember i was 69 so i could have started in 69. A lot of that stuff had been written about already. Watergate, the pentagon papers. So it just seemed like a convenient bookend to start the book. But that thats a fair question. Thats one i could talk about forever. I argue it both ways. I the end of it, i think, was much clearer, much firm what to end it. So, like, there was so much material at some point i just had to sort of package it the way i could package it. So it was accessible and had a clearer narrative and narrative arc. Yeah. One thing i should say, i dont mean to jump ahead here. When i started this book because just made me think of it, i. I did not know how it would end. So remember, this is 2016 when im going around to various publishers. And so this april that she was really a major distress and the times was not doing well. So as it turned out, there was a clean ending to this book, to the point that the paper made. I argue this book, this sort of adjustment from being a subscription based, advertising based model to a subscription based model. So but i, i cannot tell you that when i started this off, i knew that thats how it was that i just kind of looked at, lucked into that. Yeah. And i dont want to come back and touch on that sort of Digital Transformation and business side, you know, more, more recent business side stuff. But i guess to say its to stay in the past for just a moment, the book in some ways can be seen as kind of a, you know, a book about a succession of executive editors of the paper and that relationship with the publisher with whom they work, but also with the newsroom. And i guess in a sense, with wider society, you know, the society the times reaches out into, whether its journalism and this is probably a cheeky question, maybe like asking you to take your favorite child. So feel free to feel free to fudge the answer, i guess. But what was that one who either, you know, you think was particularly important to, you know, the story at the times across the period that youre writing about or just one of the editors who you felt was particularly fun or or engaging to write about. I dont think i think its a tricky question. I think its a great question. And im going to give you a little bit of a politicians answer to it, because different ones were interesting for different reasons. I know i sound like bill clinton, but so for you know, for example, like a Abe Rosenthal, the first one is a really interesting character. He is on one hand, the last of a type. I mean, i would argue a really good journalist was fine credentials, a really good new sense and to a large extent a dedication to the times, but also very flawed. And i, i dont think that he could i dont i wouldnt even qualify. He could not he could not survive this era, given his the way he acted, the way he treated people is views towards women or gay people towards people of color. He just would not survive. But hes a great, big, colorful figure and i think hes great that way. I think that dean baquet, the most recent editor, is really interesting because he was ultimately the transitional editor. He was, i think, 57 when he became executive editor. And he he was, in my opinion, smart enough to if he didnt quite understand what people were talking about, wanted to do digitally, he said, lets just do it. Hes very experimental. So he was really interesting that way. So im not going to give you all seven of that, but and then i thought joe leslie velde was, you know, this will sound counterintuitive to some people who might have worked at the times was a really interesting example because he was really the last of era. He was like the last one who i think was i mean, he might quarrel with this now, but resist thing the advent of digital and it was pretty clear i would argue that thats where the paper was going. But he was old school and he was a brilliant journalist and he put out a really good paper. He was also there. He was resisting with the change in standards. Lets remember, this is monica lewinsky. And what kind of stuff do you put the paper over . And he was sort of navigating that. And that was a very difficult time. And i think that he was a really interesting figure that way. Yeah. And am i right in saying that you spoke with all of the executive editors you cover in the book, with the exception of rosenthal, who i think cost about in 2006 . Thats correct. I spoke i spoke to all of them. Yeah. But rosenthal also, you know, i was helped by the fact different world. Right he did extends have oral histories and he had more file said you know both his personal archives and the paper archives to draw on and he was very emotive, i guess. Is that is that a fair word to use . So there was a lot of stuff, but he was the one person i didnt talk to. I spent hours with all of the executive editors. They were incredibly generous with your time. Let me just come back again and again and talk to them. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned that they were generous with their time. You also mentioned that the sources you spoke with on the whole were very candid, sort of wondering how those conversations tions went, particularly with those executive editors. Because you were i dont want to say you were passing judgment on their tenure as a critic necessarily, but obviously your account does offer, you know, strengths and weaknesses of that respective leaderships. You also, you know, in some cases more than others. I think its fair to say, get into quite personal spats and dramas that they had behind the scenes, sometimes with each other, but also, you know, with with other colleagues of theirs. So know what was it like sort of trying to price those those stories out of people who, you know, while it was in the past . Im sure im sure you still have very strong views about what happened in that and their place in it. I mean, time helps, right . So like that completely. Ill tell you why in a second. But as you get more and more recent executive editors, i think it was more difficult for them to relive painful passages. Someone like Howell Raines, who was executive editor for, i think, 20 to 20 or 23, i think, and that was before he was fired. I think that was really traumatizing period of his life. I think that there was enough distance that he was able to talk about it mostly he was with some dispatch, but its hard. And, you know, i was very, very aware when i was talking to all of them that i was in the position that you, i think, accurately described that, you know, here i am coming along as someone writing about their tenure, writing about their life, that obviously the ambition this book was to be as comprehensive about the New York Times and during this period as possible. So i was very open minded and also, you know, were going to set that of stuff very sympathetic that some of this stuff was very difficult. And, you know, some of it was really searing. I hope that on all of them, because none of them are good or bad. But i hope with all of them, i provide a really balanced look at their lives and careers. But but to your point, i was very aware and very sensitive about how difficult and uncomfortable this could be for some of them. Yeah. And beyond the personalities of the executive editors, one sort of interesting strand that i that i saw running through the book was, you know, kind of changing. I dont necessarily want to say role, but but changing sources of power and legitimacy, i guess, for the executive editor over time from very much coming from that individual relationship with the publisher to being much more dependent on you know, the competence of the newsroom. Obviously, you see Howell Raines, for example, really forced out because of the newsrooms negative reaction to his management style and handling of the series of controversies under his tenure. And then i think also you mentioned how in the internet age, you know, any editor of any publication has some of that kind of Agenda Setting power stripped away because the internet is this vast hubbub of noise and different news sources, i guess. How do you sort of see that, that role of executive editor as having changed over time from, you know, where you where you start the book to where you leave off . You know, i dont know whether i would have known or been able to answer this question when i first started this process. I completely think i can understand what youre asking now. Theres been, in so many ways, a huge change in what it means to be executive writer the New York Times. Lets just take one example, right . This sort of more vocal newsroom, right. Like it really began under max frankel in the eighties. Right. I dont think that it works at all with a put up with reporters challenging him as openly as reporters did to max frankel. Well, the newspaper published the name of a woman accuser in a rape case involving the kennedy nephew of ted kennedy. I think that view, as i recall, and you could see the newsroom becoming more images that were empowered, more vocal, and that just became more and more the case. And i think the editors, executive editors had to be more cautious of it. I dont think that that how Howell Raines was. And i think the story of Howell Raines, those chapters really describe sort of, again, whatever brilliance he had as a news guy. Right. The sort of breakdown of his position because he had antagonized newsrooms so much. And i think that if you want to be, you know, in the old days, if you want to be a great executive editor, you have to put out a great report. Right. But you also have to get along with the publisher. Right. Those are the two main things. But now its a much more complicated and in some ways maybe less powerful job. Right. Because you have to get along with the publisher. You have to get along with a more and more vocal newsroom. You have to get along this clamorous world, this the internet. You have to get along with the fact that youre being respected. Everything you did. So its a much different job. And on one hand, as you suggest, its a less powerful job. On the other hand, its probably a much more difficult job. You know, again, i dont think able to talk with last six months in the job today and that has nothing to do with his abilities as a journalist purely because of his personality. Yeah, as is usually the case with history, i guess there is that kind of story of that evolution and obviously other things evolve over time at the paper, but you know, theres also some continuity in there as well. And i guess i kept being struck by a little nugget jumping out at me that really seems to reflect stories that you say about the times today. Youre already just about the world of journalism today. You know, you know that covering Richard Nixons white house was, you know, sort of required a reinvention almost, of political reporting or at least a reconsideration of the old rules because, you know, they were so dishonest about a lot of what they were doing. Clearly, that put me in mind of donald trump and how he has kind of challenged the norms of political journalism. You know, you mentioned sort of generational fractures in the times newsroom quite a long time ago that seemed to echo, you know, reporting that comes out of the paper now about about splits between older or younger or different groups of staffers. You know, how do we sort of surprised to see some of those Historical Echoes when you were going through it . Was it something you kind of expect . It helps you sort of how do you sort of find those, i guess . No, i did not expect it to tell you the truth, because i was at around then. So again, lets use the example of frankel publishing the name of the of the one who accused the man of rape. The newsroom just exploded. I mean, they had meetings and you actually saw some cases where reporters were talking to reporters from other organizations. Now, if i said to you, youre like, well, of course. But at the time that was unthinkable. Right . Like people under the age was all era would have been afraid to lose their job. I think so. You see hints of it early on and i guess one of the subtexts of this history is the rising authority and vocal ness of the newsroom. We can debate whether thats a good thing or not, but is a thing. And its something that very much defines the New York Times and i think thats whats going on now, as you try to sort of manage how much role the newsroom and various reporters have and how it does the report. But thats been a constant theme all along, no question about it. Yeah, i do want to get onto, you know, a couple of more specific stories that were controversial that, you know, play an important part in in your book. But just sort of to finish with this idea of the power of the editor and the dynamic between then and the newsroom, you know, it does sort of seem to me like you have this procession of editors who are not exactly but sort of roughly by turns quite radical in in ways they want to change the paper, you know, quite thrusting and bold and daring, but in ways that, you know, threaten to get away from them, you know, they sort of overreach, impose themselves, problems. And then sometimes after that, you see editors coming in who are a much steady hand perceived as the kind of safe choice, you know, very well respected in the newsroom, maybe better managers, but who perhaps dont reach far enough on perceived is not going far enough to keep the times up with the times, as it were. Was that dynamic that you also sort of thought about when you when you were writing this this kind of, you know, dialectic almost between different editors dragging the paper forward, but with problems. So then you sort of have to take a step back. How do you sort of assess that dynamic . I guess . I mean, i think that is whats going on. Lets do two examples. One is when frankel, max frankel, took over, he immedia