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Joe Kahn took over as editor-in-chief of The New York Times on Tuesday, replacing the legendary Dean Baquet, but readers may not notice an immediate difference.
“I wouldn’t say there will be a sharp break in the types of stories we’re most excited about or the tone of the coverage,” Kahn said.
Inevitably, however, Kahn’s survey will mark a culture shift of sorts for the Times, a torch passing from a back-slapping Boomer (Baquet, 65) to the circumspect Generation Xer Kahn, 57, who spoke cautiously and deliberately during a recent interview at the company’s office building in Manhattan. “I’ve been a close partner with Dean for the last several years,” he said, “so there’s no type of complaint that I’m upset that as soon as I get the chance we’ll switch gears.”
“It’s absolutely inevitable that he’ll do things that are different from what I’ve done,” said Baquet, who remains at the Times to lead a new investigative reporting fellowship. “Every editor-in-chief does things differently.”
Although Baquet was known for his commitment to investigative reporting, Times veterans and close observers of the company expect Kahn to make a name for himself with a renewed emphasis on international and business reporting. Kahn covered China for the Dallas Morning News and the Wall Street Journal before serving as Beijing bureau chief for the Times in 2003; He also reported on international business and trade from the Times Washington bureau and Wall Street.
When it comes to China, “Joe knows this story better than probably anyone who hasn’t run a major American news organization,” said Richard Tofel, the former ProPublica executive who worked for the journal in the 1990s when Kahn served as Editor of another Dow Jones publication, the Far Eastern Economic Review.
And yet “life has a way of giving you your priorities when you’re editor of the New York Times,” said Bill Keller, who held the post from 2003 to 2011. “It has a war in Europe, a pandemic that hasn’t gone away, and significant challenges to American democracy. I think those things all show up pretty big in his basket.”
Even as he’s served as Baquet’s deputy since 2016, Kahn has kept a fairly low profile, meaning much of the early media coverage of his appointment has felt like a crash course in the public sphere, with multiple stories exploring his long career and He searched his network of friends and admirers for clues as to how to run the paper. “I’d be lying if I said it’s a totally enjoyable process to have people browsing and talking to high school or college classmates or journalists I worked with briefly,” Kahn said.
“Dean was more of a newsroom guy who was very good at small talk,” said former Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “It’s not so much Joe. But I think Joe is very respected for his great journalism and for really mastering both traditional news operations and digital operations.”
Perspective: Joe Kahn can be a great New York Times editor
Meanwhile, Kahn and Baquet appear to be in alignment on some of the most pressing issues on the mind of Times staffers and the paper’s many critics on social media.
Both men are into “labels as a shortcut to reporting,” as Kahn put it; He resists growing calls for the use of terms such as “racists” to characterize certain public figures, unless the newspaper has “conclusive evidence” to back it up. For example, he cited the in-depth reporting behind a recent three-part series about Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which included the claim that “Carlson built perhaps the most racist show in cable news history.” (Carlson’s top producer responded that his show “embraces the diversity of thought and presents diverse viewpoints in an industry where contrary thought and the search for truth are often ignored.”)
“I don’t know if we should be known as a place that casually or quickly throws inflammatory labels around based on some sort of quick analysis or quick guess at how something fits into other people’s belief systems,” Kahn said. “We felt there was a lot of loose discussion about the role Tucker Carlson played as an expert in dialogue in American life. But we felt like we had a real chance to slow that down and take a closer look at that.”
He also shares Baquet’s strong belief that Times journalists need to deprioritize Twitter. Part of this is an exhortation to spend less time Tweeting; A bigger concern, however, is that too many journalists view Twitter audiences as proxies for the public. Increasingly, he fretted, “Some Times journalists don’t even want to bother with certain types of stories because they anticipate the reaction they’re going to get when they write about a story they’re reporting that tends to be.” to be a topic like a lightning rod on Twitter.”
The two editors appear to be practicing what they preach on that score, both professing allegiance to unknowns with backlash Kahn faced on Twitter in late April for his comments on a Columbia Journalism Review podcast. In the interview, he expressed concern at the push for more coverage of right-wing efforts to promote former President Donald Trump’s vote-rigging lies and undermine trust in public institutions — issues the Times already devotes significant resources to.
“If we become a partisan organization focused solely on threats to democracy, and we abandon our coverage of the issues, social, political, and cultural differences that animate political participation in America, we will end the struggle for… lose independence. ‘ Kahn told CJR. Press critic Dan Froomkin called it the “sleadiest, most insidious, and clueless straw man portrayal of what critics demand that I have ever seen.”
In his interview with The Post, Kahn argued that voters are concerned about many more issues when voting than just a candidate’s attitude towards the election process. “Political coverage is a little different from challenges to democracy,” he said. And he said he believes the Times should try to reach a broad pool of potential readers who are undecided on contentious political issues.
“Many of our colleagues have become more polarized or partisan,” he said. “If we lose that, it’s curious but not fully decided [or] dedicated, impartial reader, and we don’t think about that person’s interests, I think we risk being pulled one way or the other on some of these issues ourselves.”
For his part, Baquet said he had “mixed” feelings about leaving the top job. It was the publisher, AG Sulzberger, who persuaded him to stay with the Times when he began receiving inquiries about post-Times opportunities.
“On the one hand, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a little sad about leaving a job I love,” he said. “On the other hand, the place is in good condition. I think my successor is fantastic.”