Transcripts For CSPAN2 After 20240703

Adam. Im sure if you ask most people to write a book on their place of 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 immediately said he was going to be the not abe. Right. Not able to talk. So everything that rosenthal did, he wasnt going to do. So he started socializing with reporters. He showed up at a at a baseball game and barbecue, too, at a reporters house on the upper west side. And reporters were sitting there talking to biggie like that would never happen again. Right. You know, 20 years later, i guess, ten years later, after Howell Raines is forced out, you know, bill keller comes along, hes a much more mild mannered editor. And i think he was making a point of being less sort of divisive. Now, the other side of that right, is it may be, at least initially, those editors werent as aggressive as, say, a max frankel or an abe rose at all. But theres this whole thing is about going one way, going the other, just trying to find the right sort of the right sort of tone for the newsroom of the paper. And i guess its not surprising that, you know, an editor would come along, would really push the envelope, you know, and Howell Raines was certainly one of those editors. And that maybe go too far that the next person would come back and pull it back a little bit. So you had to look at this like. So i cover seven executive editors, obviously, you have to look at the continuum of how the paper changed, did change over those seven terms. Right. But its all at the same time. Theyre all different chapters, but they all at the end are one sort of big chapter of the New York Times, the modern day New York Times. Yeah, you described the paper at one point as a muscle Bound Company that held on to its dedication to tradition, at the cost of being slow to change. I think you do sort of used the words institutionally conservative at one point to describe the times and i guess that was something that sort of jumped out at me from a lot of the the stories that you tell, you know, that is a paper that does change a lot over the course of the period that youve written about. But often has to kind of follow the example of other news organizations in the example of adapting to the internet or or in some other ways be dragged kicking and screaming a little bit. And obviously one area where where the institutional conservative ism is particularly acute that you write about is, you know, in the times is in both internal diversity within the newsroom and then also, you know, coverage of a different communities. You write, for example, about woeful shortcomings in the papers coverage of the aids crisis for example, you sort of talk a little bit about that, that kind of, you know, dynamic within the newsroom and how the times sort of did failed in so many different chapters of your book. When it came to that that goal of diversity in the newsroom here. I mean, the paper was essentially a conservative, small c resistance to change organization. I think that has clearly changed over the past eight years. But that was very much the case. And those are two separate examples. Let me take both. You could see it in terms of the diversity of the newsroom. You know, as early as 1969, i found the last publisher at the time, sulzberger, complaining about the back of the newsroom, was so overwhelmingly white and saying, i want to do something about this. And you read his message to the editors. This speech he gave, as i recall, and i believe him. I think he really believed it. Right. That was what he believed in. But it didnt make a difference. The papers sort of progress in in that it sort of diversifying the newsroom was really slow over decades. Right. You know, max frankel comes in and hes like, okay, institutes a one for one policy where for every one white journalist, either they be a person of color hire. Right. And he but after six months, he was really frustrated because it just wasnt happening. And he was coming up against a resistance of these people. You know, the editors who would say like, you know, we dont want to make decisions based on that. We want to make decisions on based on who we think the best journalists are, are putting that in air quotes, because thats obviously a contentious kind of way to look at the world. So it took a really long time and i think that goes to the nature of the paper and also nature of society. I, i think on some things the times wasnt afraid to be and, you know, not a big news story sincerely, but in that kind of stuff, i need to just add to that that i think that the culture has changed dramatically. There are over the past five or six years, but that was absolutely the case for a long time. And, you know, i think you could blame society, you could blame the conservative of the times. You could blame elitism. Right. Which was very much defining the times in those early years, the age thing is a slightly different example, which im happy to talk about. I think it has to go very much with the fact that a lot of people epitomized by both it all were kind of threatened and uncomfortable with homosexuality. Even before the aids epidemic came along in 1980, 1981. And as a result, the paper was and i dont think anyone would quarrel with this now woefully slow in writing about this calamity that was taking place in its own backyard. Remember that like new york and san francisco, where there and los angeles, to a lesser extent were the cities where this was really hitting hard. And it was i think, two years from when the times first wrote the story about this mysterious epidemic that was a pandemic epidemic that was breaking out mainly among homosexual intravenous drug users. I think that they knew that at the time before it became a front page story. And, you know, one thing, max frankel did when he came in was say that were going to change this. And he basically said to me the effect of were not going to be on the wrong side of history here. And he signed a bunch of people to keep to write about it. Now, whats also interesting, i hear he you know, he when he came back from overseas, one of the first stories he overseas assigned as the metropolitan area was a story about the increasing visibility of gay people on the streets of new york. But, you know, i came across you know, i was going through old documents. I came across an old private diary he wrote that was over in the public library. I dont know how it ended up there, but, you know, he talked about people ask me, you know, whether or not i would hire a homosexual for a prominent job because i would not hire a homosexual reporter to cover it. John, this is from my memory, which two examples. But this is basically right. The white house and the state department. I would have them cover culture and, you know, fashion, right. He said the reason for that is that homosexuals form cliques in the newsroom, and thats very dangerous to the sort of, you know, spirit of the newsroom. So this was very interesting because like for years, people had speculated that. Rosenthal it was all was homophobic. Right. And like, i mean, i guess you could say people thought that you could judge him by the way, he directed the coverage. But when you find this private diary and when hes talking about it, hes saying in his own words. I think it helps you understand the papers real slowness in timidity in covering this huge crisis that swept across the country in the early 1980s. Yeah, obviously, im one of those tedious people who has a social science degree and, you know, political scientists talk about actors and institutions and, you know, which are more determinative in sort of shaping political change. And obviously, just to a large extent, the answer is usually both, but sort of interested, you know, in those moments where the times has been sort of institutional conservative, whether you think its kind of preponderant because of the attitudes of the people in charge as you as you were just sort of mentioning in the example of of of aids coverage and those related things, whether there is something you know about the times as an institution that has kind of contributed to a sense of, you know, inertia or states or being difficult to, you know, turn on a dime. A sense comes across, i guess, reading your book that you could almost compare it to a big ship, right . Its huge and obviously has a kind of very prominent role both within the journalism world and society. Yeah. And its almost, you know, with a very big ship that is something that doesnt necessarily have a marriage. Right. Turning circle. So i guess i am curious if you if you sort of think there is something about the times as an institution that has, you know, contributed to that dynamic rather than just it being a result of the people in charge. I do. I think i may even use a phrase comparing it to a ship. Its very slow and its very hard to turn around. But part of it is also its selfregard. And im not putting that in a kind of not putting it down, just what it is. Right. It views itself as sort of this or did not so much anymore. Is is arbiter of society and arbiter of journalistic norms of society norms. And, you know, the as you know, the sort of dna of a newspaper is you want to be first on stuff, right . You want to break the story first, you know, whatever it is, right. But i think on some stuff, it was comfortable not being first. I think it was comfortable not being first on aids coverage or in some diversity coverage. And part of that is because it had this sort of, you know, rarefied side view of itself and its role in society. And i think youre right, part of it has to do with the people who were there. But the other part of it was just the way it viewed itself and other organizations, you could see this through all kinds of stuff, including the transformation to digital, other organized nations moved comparatively a lot more quickly. And that is just because the times is a big conservative. Again, small C Organization that i think was where a lot of change or change too fast that one thing i discovered which i didnt know coming into the book is i dont want to say it was completely change resistant, right . Like one of the earliest things we talk about is how in the 1970s, when the paper was facing a, you know, an economic calamity, too strong a word, but problems. Right. People were moving to the suburbs of new york city. Advertising was off to click click. They began to create this sort of food section and culture section and all these sections that we all kind of know today. That was kind of a big thing for the time. I mean, times like the idea of being these two, like i guess com really gray boring a newspaper and so all of a sudden, you know, there was a front page of like the dining or food section, whichever was called the time with a big picture of a picture across the top. Right. And i think that it says something about Arthur Sulzberger, senior partner solver, that he was willing to do that. I mean, Abe Rosenthal resisted that because it was like this is going across against the standards of what he sees the New York Times. But i think he i dont think i could see in his memos he began to realize that he needed to do this just to survive with the publisher. And after it was all done, the publisher was like, i love this stuff. I dont know why we didnt do it sooner. The lesson here is because looking back now, john, those arent you know, this dont seem like the biggest changes in the world, but it does show that the paper at least had some ability to change, but certainly not as much as any other kind of, you know, major newspaper organization in this country. Yeah. And a just quickly, unlike the the hulking ship of the New York Times, your ship metaphor obviously sailed into my head. So elegantly that i thought it was an idea. So apologies for the right. Yeah, its funny. I cant i cant recall with i love that allusion in the book or not, but that idea is certainly there. So either way. Well, gave perfect it sailed across in very early on and that i mentioned tortured ship puns aside that i wanted to sort of move over to some of these individual stories and episodes that that, you know, were really markers of of the times as history as you tell it in the book on and on, the sort of editorial side and two of those that you dedicate a lot of space to, the super interesting of course, where the jayson blair plagiarism and falsifying nation scandal and obviously also the coverage of the war in iraq, which you know in places was a really prejudice and sort of booster ish of the administrations case for war. And i think, you know, that, you know, obviously spoke to the publisher at the time later said that you know, of that period when those scandals, i guess, were roughly contemporaneous, it was the blair one that the paper more reputationally but you seem to disagree with that and think it was probably the iraq scandal that either did the most damage or revealed the kind of bigger flaw at the times. And thats i guess im reading you wrongly, but you sort of you are youre writing me incorrectly. I get that a lot of thought. I mean, maybe this is a argument i should engage, but i think i disagree with the publisher about that. Like jayson blair was enormously damaging. Just for viewers who might not know he was a reporter. He came along and he just invented stories out of whole cloth for whatever its in the book you can read about why we had substance problems and just i mean, you know, it just invented stories out of whole cloth. And when they started investigating him and began looking at his work, they realized that there were tons of them. Right. And it was i mean, i think it was pathological. It just was. And it showed you know, the paper, like always kind of assume you could trust the reporters. And i think our readers, the papers readers, always assumed they could trust the newspaper. So thats what i think. Arthur Sulzberger Jr is talking about when he talks about how damaging it was. And i do think it took years for the times to get past that. I mean, there was a long time when you would turn on david letterman, the talk show host here, and they would be making jokes about jayson blair or if you were out reporting a story and somebody will discredit you, they would say youre just another jayson blair. The thing about the war is that i think the stakes were higher right. And i think that that has fed a long term mistrust. Now overstate this. Right. Because obviously, i think people tend to trust that kind of stuff. But mistrust of the times on the extent to which theyre going to, you know, carry or repeat the administration line. I mean, some of those stories were exactly as you say. They they were either wrong or just to boost the russian for whatever reasons. And i just i think that still is coloring in the way a lot of people see the times today. I mean, the fact of the matter is, like the times, like in the early, like i think if you had punched bigger here, well, you would be alive. You know what i might he would not completely quarrel with the idea of the times always being i overstate this part of the government or you know what i mean . There was sort of part of the same what we used to call growing up, the establishment and i think thats probably not a good thing. And i think the Washington Post sort of began to break that with its watergate coverage. I think now the media is generally really broken that but the iraq coverage would seem to promote what turned out to be, if not untruths, distortions about the war that was being pushed by the george bush 43 administration. I think really damaged the paper. And i think that we still to some extent pay a price for that, even though i mean, the paper the paper change. The reporter who was at the center of that, judy miller, left the paper. I think the paper is much more scrupulous in terms of reporting those kind of stories. But i dont know. I think that was kind of a big deal. I mean, i spent a lot of time on that, the book. I spent a lot of time. I supported the books. I think theyre both really big events, right. But i you know, if you ask me, i think that ultimately iraq was more damaging. Yeah, i think, as you say, know, jayson blair looks like a really huge, basic failure. But at some level, you know, when youre working in even an institution as big and powerful as the New York Times, relationships do, i guess have to be based on trust. And if someone just completely yeah, you know, refuses to accept that that kind of basic compact, then to some level theyll probably always be able to perpetuate some kind of wrongdoing. Whereas i think you make the case that the failures that led up to the iraq war were more routine and more, you know, within, within the papers kind of organizational principles and structures than than sort of, you know, free one off attacks coming from from someone well outside that if that if that makes sense, that makes it also much more damaging. Right. The repercussions of the war in iraq. Right. Whatever that however much you want to make the times part of why it happened are huge. I talked to one editor who was, um, who was responsible for disciplining jayson blair and he said, you know, he says we had this manual, right . We have all these rules and stuff, but we have no rules against somebody making stuff. He can use the word stop. Or you guess what. I mean, i guess somebodys making stuff up. And i sat there, i thought, yeah, look at that point. I think it was so i mean, obviously you had janet cook, but i think it was so out of like the range of possibilities. Like everyone was kind of shocked by it and that to some extent is oversimplifying. I mean, i think that jason was a very aggressive reporter and he did he was good at doing what editors liked and he was hungry. And he was always, not always, but often on the phone and willing to do stuff that fed into it as well. But, you know, ultimately, like you know, i think if youre an editor on the desk is 9 00 at night. These are back when you had print deadlines and youre looking at a story and a quote seems like a little bit too good to be true. Well, at that point, you wouldnt think that it is good to be true. Youd think, hey, this reporter is reporting from midland, texas, and he says hes there and hes quoting the family. So, of course, its true. Well, i dont think that would happen today. But again, there was something about the jayson blair that is seeing more individual than systems. Does that make sense to you . Yeah, i think that was what i was getting off. Of course, some extent that both both just a final question on on the iraq war front, because while you do clearly show that some of the coverage, as you say, was was wrong or based or or both, you do take a sort of nuanced position around what that coverage was like. I mean, as someone who wasnt following the New York Timess coverage at the time, because i was like 11, i think, and in england, they probably didnt know what the New York Times was, but i was interested read as someone who sort of looked back on that coverage but wasnt reading it at the time. You know, initially Howell Raines, who had previously been the Editorial Page Editor and was the executive editor by then, had actually it was actually facing accusations of kind of being, you know, too anti intervention. I guess the insinuation that given the sort of heightened security climate after 911 was he was being unpatriotic, i guess. Yeah. To talk about some of those sort of nuances in how you found that coverage going back to look at it because i guess among among many critics this sort of ossified, simplified narrative now is that the coverage was kind of one big probush administration failure. But you paint a rich picture. Yeah i think that you i think you make a really important, important point here, which is the context of the time. Like we come back to Howell Raines in the second. Thats also the point. But like this is after september 11th and there was a expectation, right, that everyone was patriotic and were all on the same side and were not going to do anything to, you know, damage to the country or damage our national i mean, our country had been attacked. Right. So i think that was very much in the head of everyone of the New York Times. And i think that probably includes coverage for three or four, maybe five years. I mean, you can really kind of track it before the paper and all papers. I dont think its just true of the New York Times sort of got its bearings right this difficult. Right. This was really challenging. And i guess from the papers perspective, even though other people to get this right. Right. Why would the Administration Lie about the threat of wmd weapons, mass destruction that could once again put the us at risk . So youre putting yourself in house position. How raines position . Yeah, kind of get it right. Like im not i mean, i hope i provided a nuanced account of this because its a human drama involving you. You would be editors and publishers and reporters who were just trying to figure out a very difficult and scary time. I mean, would that making it too personal for him . He lived down in the west village, right . He lived on, i think, 10th or 11th street. Thats like a mile, maybe a mile and a half away from where those buildings collapsed. Right. To a World Trade Center buildings. When he left his when he left his office, left his apartment that morning, he looked back over his shoulder as he jumped into a cab. And he could see, like, i guess i was living down there to remember what it looked like. The smoke in the air and the helicopters and just the like it was on grasp ebola it was just really youre not really trained to understand whats going on. So i think thats important perspective for him. The other thing, this is a kind of a different issue, but, you know, Howell Raines, as you said, came from being the Editorial Page Editor to become the executive editor, as did max frankel, like, i always thought there was a little bit of, look, i dont think that should be disqualifying, but thats complicated because you spent the past, whatever, six or eight years giving your opinions. All of a sudden youre supposed to come in and you know, run the news News Department without giving your opinions. Right. Or not even having opinions that youre sharing. And i think that thats an a difficult adjustment. And, you know, how was Howell Raines, the editorials which you write about in the book a lot. You know, he was a hell of a writer and he could write really powerfully. And he wrote really, really evocative editorials. I mean, go back and look at his editorial about Robert Mcnamara having lied about the war in vietnam. I mean, it was just i mean, the words will just stick with you forever. So i you could understand where a reader or somebody buys or follows the New York Times would say, hey, this guy who had such strong opinions running the editorial pages all of a sudden running the News Department, why should we not take that seriously the way hes running the newspaper . But thats a fair question. I mean, i think its one of the things that you think about it and but, you know, again, theres a history of Editorial Page Editors who work really close with the publisher becoming executive orders as well. Yeah. And i wanted to ask about that. But just to follow up on the previous point very quickly, do you think that in that in that kind of coverage of iraq that did turn out to be credulous and booster, that there any sense of a sort of overreaction on how overcorrection i should say, on Howell Raines is part to the perception he was, i guess, squishy in the eyes of neocon pundits pundits. I, i do think the answer to that is yes. I was just pausing as i was trying to think how we would argue if he was here. I do think the answer was yes. And im trying to put myself and i did in the book into the reality of the situation. He was dealing with his time and, you know, initially, you know, it is all sketched out here, right . Like the paper read. Its a very tough, skeptical about iraq and it had been attacked by among others, cheney, whos a Vice President at the time. There was a lot of incoming coming in and a lot of people that were sort of accusing the paper of being biased the other way and do i think that influenced to some extent Howell Raines thinking of some of the other people seeking it, how to approach the coverage . Yeah, make it pretty clear what you read the book and you look at it, you know, i keep thinking like, what would i do in this situation . It was a scary, difficult time, but clearly, you know, they went too far and the other direction and they were too believing as some of the stories, not all of the stories, but some of the stories that judy miller was writing out of iraq and out of washington, dc. Yeah. Did you go back to that that sort of strange divide you mentioned between the newsroom and the editorial pages just kind of more broadly . I mean, the times and journalists who work there have sometimes very frustratingly been keen to make the point on social media in the past that, you know, the opinion writers dont represent the newsroom and vice versa, that there is some kind of firewall there. But the reality is always struck me as a bit more complicated. And yeah, it was very interesting to read in the book that, you know, the editorial pages were, you know, kind of seen as wheels almost for the for the top job in the entire newsroom on on more than one occasion. Yeah. How do you how do you sort of approach that . Because on the one hand, yeah, i guess showing that you are capable of running a whole sort of mini fiefdom within the paper before running the whole thing makes on a kind of managerial level. But it does expose your, you know, pretty widely, as you just mentioned. So yeah, how do you i guess to what extent was your view of that sort of divide between the news and opinion sections shaping, moved or how has it evolved . While you were writing the book and doing the research . So i, i, if you had asked me this before i wrote the book, i dont think i could answer that question. This is one of the things i sort of figured out as i was watching it go on the newsroom. And theres always been this wall. And youre right, its porous. But this wall between the newsroom and editorial page and the editorial page is on a different floor. And, you know, people reporters are a little bit wary about socializing with members of the board or executive. The head of the editorial page. But theres always some interaction, right. And like the columnists and the editorial writers and the and the head of the editorial page obviously want to be able to draw a reporters to understand stuff at the writing for editorial. So its kind of complicated, but you will youll find reporters who are often very wary. Ill tell you what i thought it was not in the book, though, frankly, you would be sick of it if i thought of it. I would have put it in the book. Bill sapphire. Remember him . He was a big deal. Conservative columnist of the times and with the New York Times is doing covering the convention in you know, if i told you which convention it was, i would be lying to you because i in so many i forget. But it was a convention. And you had this morning meeting of all the Editorial Staff excuse me, all the newsroom staff and bill sapphire showed up on morning right at this meeting and one of the reporters there, david, raised his hand and says, bill sapphire should not be here. Hes a member of the editorial or a columnist at york times. This is the news, really. Theres a line between these two sections and he should go. And bill left. Right. I always thought that was very, very sort of revealing. Right. But the other part of this, as you pointed out, right, when Howell Raines with Arthur Sulzberger jr asked Howell Raines to become as Editorial Page Editor reads at first, resisted because hes a newsroom guy like think he didnt even read the editorials that closely and he wanted to run the newsroom but he talked to arthur and he thought about it. He realized when youre dating the editorial page, youre dealing with the publisher multiple times a week. Right. Youre consulting with him an editorial. Youre inviting him to these big lunches and dinners with these, you know, big newsmakers. Youre coming in president s and stuff. So you a lot of interaction with with the publisher and its a publisher who decides the next executive editor is going to be so in the sort of i dont mean this is our craft because just the way the world works, but that is just a really good way to position yourself to become the next executive editor. And i think taking nothing away from Howell Raines journalistic credentials or credentials as the Editorial Page Editor and say with max frankel, the same thing happened. I think they were both very, very aware of that. And i think thats one of the reasons they became executive editor, is because the the publisher at the time, the publishers at the time were able to observe them, close up and decide, do we want this person for this . So its complicated i dont for me to talk about the line these days are the lines over the years have draw. Ive sort of dropped a little bit between whats editorial and whats a news story and reporters are encouraged more to have a point of view non opinion is the difference about what were i mean by that point of view in the story stories have more edges. Its harder to sort of distinguish between whats on the news pages and whats on the editorial pages. And you could see various papers try to deal with that and how they package or present the stories and the editorial in the columns on their websites or on their newspapers. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, you know, the events of the internet has kind of disaggregated the newspaper as a product and opinion and news content and everything in between sort of floats, atomized on, on the web, which leads as a as a not at all contrived segway into the next question i was going to ask, which about the internet and you mentioned at the beginning, of course, you know, the times has become this incredible digital success story. You know, its a real its a global multiplatform empire with the athletic can words old and crosswords and cooking and a world class app. But your book will still be at work either. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. And that as well. And its certainly not an exhaustive, not an exhaustive list on my part, but yeah, your book really details how that you know there were teething troubles on on the way to that Digital Future how it was not really the case that the times was the kind of mobile startup ish pioneer in this space. You know, it was it was a process to get that right, right, right. I mean, it took a long time. I mean, theres a couple of Different Things that happened. One was the implementation of a paywall, right . The paper tried it twice and and i think a point was reached when they just Arthur Sulzberger junior realized the papers not going to survive unless it gets a, you know, a sort of regular source of revenue. And what had just happened, there had been another economic downturn. And he walked into the of Martin Nielsen hall, who is the head of the digital operation, and said, you know, i have to talk to you about this. You know, if this is another rundown like this, i have to lay off a third of the newsroom. And i dont want to keep doing that every time theres a shift in the economic cycles of the country. Right . Yeah. We need to think about different ways to raise money, which means we need to start charging for content. And as you probably know, there was a long resistance in the digital world. You know, information should be free, right to charging for this. But i think they realized that was the thing to do. And it took years to get it right. The first time they did it, it didnt work. They had to kind of abandon it, but second time it did work. And i think that they were i think i know they were stunned when they implemented the paywall, began charging, you know, it was a little bit more than a nominal fee. It was a real fee for people to get access to a decent amount of content. They were stunned by how many people began signing up right away. And i think what up to now 10 million subscribers. I dont think they ever would have, ever would have expected that the the change in the i use the word product advisedly, because it seems not fitting for a news organization. The changes the product is taking time and i think you know other organizations were ahead of the paper the time, the times. But i think the tide is really, you know, in terms of the way it presents news visually, aurally, interactively, the different kinds of services. Its just been a stunning, stunning change. And i wonder, you know, were able to all live today if he was to look at the newyorktimes. Com product, the app would even begin to recognize what it was from what he remembers from 40 years ago, its been a huge transformation. And i excuse me in a weird way, as it was going on, like its slow, right . Theres stops and starts. It runs up against the institutional conservatism and. You know, youll see in the in the book, theres editors early on saying, this is ridiculous. We dont think this is ever going to happen. Why are we wasting our time on this . But it feels inevitable and its not. By the way, its not only generational. Its not only younger people who come into the newsroom. Its also some really smart people saw look to the future and realize where things were going. And i think realized how exciting a digital New York Times could be. Or did you say, i dont want to sit in the archives a Digital News Organization could be and saw the way things were going and the paper put money into it and resources into a you know, you could see it, you know, every day. Yeah. And some of my favorite scenes in the book are very much, you know, the sort of stuffy old news room site, the stereotype and their interactions with the kind of younger digital renegade age, i think is one of the words you used for them. Yeah, youre right. Im telling you right off of dean baquet, his editorship, something i found interesting, which was saying that the newspaper would go through a storm of change and experimentation as it tried to distinguish what it did in the name of habits and tradition, from the essential values that defined the times, and that was a quote that really jumped out to me, because i heard of how dean baquet sort of talk about that before. But in the context of kind of editorial philosophy and objectivity, you know, trying to work out what is, i think in in his words, core and what is right and what is something were just doing and maybe we can do it better. So the unbelievably difficult question for you out of that is, you know, i guess after after literally writing the book on the New York Times, what do you see . What do you sort of see as core New York Times values . What is what is the sort of core identity of the paper, you know, that did sort of hold all the way through the storytelling, even though so much of what passed for tradition and habit and, you know, and just just what the times was, was of doing, you know, fell by the wayside in the paper, transformed itself. You know, i think what the core is and will continue to be and probably should be, is just writing about the really writing or presenting talking about the really important events and characters and the things people need to know to understand the world around them. I sound like a, you know, advertising or something, but i, i do think thats really important that to me, thats what i think rebecca was talking about. Thats what the paper needs to keep doing. Now, the thing thats really important here, which i think he got because hes a transitional, in my opinion, right, is that you cant not try other things even if they dont work right. So like wurtzel all for example, doesnt remotely fall into that definition i just gave you. But obviously people like it and i dont think i mean, people could argue with me, but i dont think it violates what the times stands for. So its that plus world. But theres other things. The paper could do, you know, that might. I dont im sure give you a big i can think of what they just dont they try and just like dont work experiments that dont work. But i think as long as you remember that core, the was talking baquet was talking about that experiment beyond that thats the way forward the. Other point that beck was making because i you definitely fixed that fixate fixed on it where i think its a critical argument here a point here, Pivotal Point here is that the stuff the paper used to do might have obligation. You know, go cover a member. This is like that. Maybe theres a real example where youll see what i mean. Go cover a meeting of the zoning board that the time different coverage, zoning format of a city council because the City Councils meeting and i think baquet would argue and most people would agree the papers have enough resources to do it and theres no reason to do it. And people can get that kind of like routine News Coverage, News Coverage in quotes, any place else now. So thats the kind of thing that i think he wants to he wants to shed away. I think the paper has succeeded in shedding away. Its like you ultimately have limited resources and focus them on doing the things that make the paper as great as it can be. So that would include the core stuff that i was talking to a minute ago. But also, you i mean, i would i would include cooking, right. Which is obviously been a big success. The paper. Right. It doesnt i dont think say for example, do we cooking in addition to that stuff in any way undercuts what the times is about and even taking it back 40 years. Im not going to decades. Dave rosenthal, who resisted initially some of these special sections, but ultimately came to think, hey, we could do these special sections, including one on cooking, right . And it doesnt take away from the paper at all. Right. Still, the New York Times, where they did draw the line, by the way, Arthur Sulzberger like comics. No way i to say you should say i dont want to see comics. That is paper. Which i think is now changing, by the way. Im just. One one final question, then, which is your book is a terrific show. The institutional history. And there are so many great characters to just jump right off the page. But you also write at one point that the stories of the players are really is important to the story of the organization itself. I guess i want in a nutshell for you is the story of the New York Times as as an organization or to put it a different way, i guess, what does this institutional history kind of mean in the context of, you know, the world that the New York Times inhabits, the journalistic industry, that the New York Times inhabits, as well. So the reason i said that is, you know, im a reporter, right . I used to work at the daily news like i like flashy, you know, shiny, shiny object stories. Right. And i think that the characters and their foibles and their victories and their personality to some extent are really important to understanding the times. And also they i think they really i hope they really enliven the narrative here. Right. But i didnt want to lose fact track of the fact that you lose track, the fact that ultimately this book is about to be archived. Its about this institution that has somehow managed to go through numerous transformations, transformations and continues to be a primary source of information and, you know, hopefully credibility, which come back to this in five years for the country and i try to be very careful not to let this shiny object get in the way of the bigger story and ultimately, this is a story about the New York Times that. I think one of the lessons of like, for example, how reigns, again or. Jill abramson. Right. I think both. Brilliant journalists. Right. Getting pushed out. Right. Is that there was someone else there. Right. Like there are layers and layers of talent, you know, at the paper. Right. And, you know, i keep telling people like the people that work the New York Times and it goes kind of goes to their heads. And i keep telling, you know, right now youre adam nagourney, the New York Times, where you lead the New York Times like somebody else is going to fill that spot. Youre defined by where you work. And i try to keep that in mind, right . Like, one of the things about the times is that theres so much talent and, you know, screwed up this there that you got to be careful not to just make this about the people, which obviously make it interesting story. Theres a history, but also about this institution as well. Yeah. Adam nagourney. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me. I was agood evening, everyone. And welcome to politics and prose. Im brad graham im the coowner of the bookstore along with my wife, melissa muscatine and were very pleased to be hosting a jeff