by Andrea Marinelli
Kahn, 57, who has been promoted to the Times since 1998, was widely expected. The future editor represents the traditional values of the New York newspaper, but at the same time is called to lead an editorial office in profound transformation
Geopolitics and digital development: Joseph Kahn, the new editorinchief of the New York Times announced by Verlag AG Sulzberger on Tuesday, perfectly combines the two challenges that the newspaper will have to face in the near future. A former Beijing and Shanghai correspondent for whom he received a Pulitzer Prize in 2006, then Secretary of State, Kahn had been deputy editor of The Times since 2016, second only to Dean Baquet, the first African. American director to leave post in June After 8 years at the helm, in this role Kahn led the newspaper’s digital transformation, which he accelerated from 2018 with the appointment of the new publisher, the sixth member of the OchsSulzberger dynasty. This announcement comes as no surprise to those who worked with him, Sulzberger, 41, wrote. Joe credits his impeccable news judgment ability, sophisticated understanding of the forces that shape the world and a proven track record of assisting journalists bring to the creation of ambitious and bold work.
Kahn, 57, who has been promoted to the Times since 1998, was widely expected. In fact, the future editor embodies the traditional values of the New Yorker newspaper, but at the same time is called to lead an editorial office in profound transformation, no longer just dedicated to the daily wonder of the print edition, but focused on the digital future and readers everywhere to reach world. In recent years, Kahn has made that transition, the same Times reporters explain, by reorganizing a newsroom of 1,700 staff — the largest in its 171year history — to make it more agile and faster to respond more effectively requirements of modern journalism. She has focused on continuous realtime updates and visual journalism while driving the newspaper’s international expansion with the opening of offices in Europe and Asia: since 2016 she has created a hub that covers the news cycle 24 hours a day. , a continuous handoff between the London and Seoul offices, brokered by the New York editorial team.
We are betting on the digital future, but let’s not forget the traditional newspaper: we want to offer the best to those who still love to leaf through the newspaper, Kahn explained in an interview with Massimo Gaggi published in Lettura del Corriere in 2017 The newspaper evolved into a product no longer based on advertising but on subscriptions, which at the time was 1.6 million for digital, 3 million including print and other paid subscriptions. We’re not interested in fighting to maximize the number of pages viewed online: the cornerstone on which we’re building the future of the company is subscriptions. Page views, a certainly telling parameter, are not the measure of success. Going forward, a lessseen article that gives the reader the impression that they can find information from us that they can’t get anywhere else is worth more than entertaining content that goes viral but doesn’t attract subscribers.
Along with the digital renewal and the reorganization of work within the gray lady, Kahn brings a long international experience, necessary to understand and tell how the global balances are changing fast: the pandemic and especially the invasion Indeed, Ukraine has shifted the focus of public debate after more than a decade of being dominated by business. I’m concerned for many reasons, Kahn himself admitted to New York Magazine days before the appointment was officially announced. It is a great responsibility to lead an editorial board of this size and ambition at this moment in history.
Indeed, the new director inherits a seething editorial board that has seen generational and social conflicts in recent years, culminating in the forced resignation of former opinion site editor James Bennet in 2020. Bennett, who was also vying to succeed Baquet, had been forced to leave after publishing the opinion of Republican Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who called for the army to be sent in to stop the unrest following the killing of George Floyd.
It wasn’t the only difficult moment in recent years: there have been very tough union struggles; the scandal of the acclaimed and awardwinning Caliphate podcast, which turned out to be less accurate than the story of an imposter, exploded; Reporters have been fired for careless tweets or allegations of using racist language while traveling with students; others like the moderate Bari Weiss have claimed they were never defended against the social media attacks, or like recently Taylor Lorenz, an astute Gen Z observer who joined the Washington Post the difficulties hinted at by dealing with such an established institution. I hope the Times continues to evolve, Lorenz said in an interview with Vanity Fair.
A few months after my arrival, an editorinchief told me “If you work at the New York Times, your last name is Times”, statistician Nate Silver, another star who had left (2013), slammed the door. The newspaper brand comes first and individual voices are marginalized. But under Baquet’s stewardship, the New York newspaper won 18 Pulitzer Prizes and expanded tremendously, reaching 10 million subscribers with a year ahead in February and acquiring startups of all kinds: for 550 million the website. for 25 podcast production company Serial, for a handful (million) of dollars the online game Wordle.
Now the handoff between the former editor — an oldschool reporter who recently urged his reporters to stay less on Twitter and especially not to be swayed by comments on social media — and his righthand man is just over formally, however, it marks the leap into a new era. In 2014, the Times was looking mainly in America, inward, and for this reason, too, had hired a former national editor with great experience. Now he wants to expand across borders with Kahn.
The Bostonborn son of Staples cofounder Leo Kahn, who was also a brief journalist, graduated from Harvard with a history degree in 1987 and, as a young man, ran two newspapers: his high school and the famous Harvard student newspaper, Crimson. in which he took the place of future CNN President Jeff Zucker. After working for the Dallas Morning News, he earned a master’s degree in Asian Studies from the same university in Cambridge, learned Mandarin and moved to China in 1989, first as a freelancer and then after the Tiananmen protests as a correspondent for the Texaner Zeitung. : He was first arrested by Chinese authorities, then deported, but his work enabled the Morning News to recruit a Pulitzer for international coverage.
After four years as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, where he was also editor of the weekly The Far Eastern Economic Review, he joined the New York Times. First he dabbled in economics, then he returned to China where he stayed for 5 years between Shanghai and Beijing, winning another Pulitzer for a study of the local legal system, and finally he returned to New York in 2008 and rose through the ranks in the newspaper : Deputy of Foreign Affairs for three years, head of the same editorial board in 2011 and deputy director in 2016 alongside Baquet.
At a recent international event, he outlined his newspaper’s priorities: maintaining independence in times of polarization; increase diversity of thought, race, gender and economic background in the workforce; compete with global media, from major TV networks to niche startups.
April 20, 2022 (Change April 20, 2022 | 15:18)
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