In short
Episode topic: Joe Kahn, executive editor of the New York Times (since 2022), discusses how the Times is prioritizing original reporting in a polarized era, transforming its newsroom with heavy video investment, and competing for attention against “AI slop” and other news sources.
Guest backgrounds
Kahn is the NYT executive editor overseeing about 2,200 journalists and the digital newsroom; he also oversees the Times’ Sunday Magazine and T Magazine. The host is Peter Kofka (Business Insider chief correspondent).
Key claims
The Times’ job is to inform with independent, fact-based reporting rather than mirror activists’ preferred narratives. Criticism from opposite sides can “cancel out,” and editors must “follow the journalism” instead of audience reaction. The Times is ahead of competitors in forecasting a second Trump term (including Project 2025 and cabinet plans). Video is a “proprietary formula” to integrate short, expert reporting into the Times experience and compete on social platforms where low-quality content dominates.
Notable examples
Project 2025 coverage; video-first “watch feed” in the NYT app; Wordle as a free top-of-funnel product; Nick Kristof’s Gaza rape accusations piece run in Opinion (edited by Opinion, not the newsroom).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Role of the Executive Editor
1:30 to 3:34
Joe Kahn explains his responsibilities and the New York Times' coverage priorities.
“You can tell The Times cares a lot about video these days because there's a video on The Times homepage almost every day.”
Challenges in Journalism Today
3:34 to 5:48
Kahn discusses the challenges of providing diverse perspectives in a polarized environment.
“So it includes Tea and the New York Times Sunday Magazine and the New York Times newspaper, and then the digital operation of the New York Times, which is the heart and soul of the newsroom today.”
State of the News Industry
5:48 to 8:10
A discussion on the competition and the changing landscape of news organizations.
“often affirming their beliefs as opposed to informing them of things that potentially challenge their beliefs.”
Compensation and Career Mobility
8:10 to 11:46
Kahn addresses how compensation in journalism has evolved and the implications for staff.
“you know, kind of graphics and visualizations where we have the ability to tell stories really however people want to get those stories and understand the news.”
The Athletic vs. The New York Times
11:46 to 14:00
A conversation about the differences in operations and compensation between The Athletic and the Times.
“but that being part of this kind of engine of journalism actually has a ton of benefits.”
Compensation and Talent at the New York Times
14:00 to 15:03
Discusses the compensation structure for journalists at the New York Times and the challenges of talent retention.
“And it operates according to a very high set of principles, but not identical to the ones that the New York Times newsroom does.”
Collaboration with Independent Creators
15:03 to 17:42
Explores the New York Times' approach to working with independent journalists and creators.
“So they are benefiting from being part of a larger organization that costs a lot of money to run.”
Broadening Perspectives in Journalism
17:42 to 20:06
Examines the New York Times' strategy to cover diverse viewpoints across news stories.
“But, you know, we're mainly looking for journalists who are all in.”
Engaging Readers with Varied Perspectives
20:06 to 21:46
Discusses how presenting multiple perspectives enhances reader engagement and satisfaction.
“But the general perception was you were talking about, you know, the Times is staffed with primarily liberal people.”
Response to Political Polarization
21:46 to 23:39
Details the challenges and strategies for covering polarizing issues in journalism today.
“We are challenging people to think about the issues of the day from a variety of perspectives, including their own, but also others.”
Show all 18 chapters
Navigating Criticism and Journalism Ethics
23:39 to 26:13
Explores how the New York Times navigates criticism while maintaining journalistic integrity.
“Is there a perspective we need to pursue?”
Coverage of Trump's Presidency and Future
26:13 to 28:00
Reflects on the New York Times' coverage of Donald Trump and its implications for democracy.
“If you don't want that or if you're angry that we're doing that, you're never going to be satisfied with the New York Times because that's the core of our mission.”
The New York Times' Role in Political Discourse
28:00 to 32:46
Gain insights on how The New York Times informs public opinion on political candidates.
“in terms of the immigration and deportation agenda, his skepticism about NATO and his desire to do something fundamentally to shift the U.S.”
The Intersection of News and Gaming at The Times
34:39 to 42:00
Discover how The New York Times balances news with entertainment and gaming.
“As America reaches its 250th anniversary, how should Americans assess their country's strength relative to the rest of the world.”
The Shift to Video Journalism
42:00 to 49:31
Learn about the New York Times' strategy to integrate video into journalism.
“Or to be taken directly to the scene of a news event and exposed directly to what that individual is seeing and reporting at the time.”
Navigating Controversy in Reporting
49:43 to 56:01
Explore how the New York Times handles sensitive stories and author collaborations.
“You've talked about wanting the New York Times brand to be more accessible.”
AI's Role in Journalism
56:01 to 1:03:10
Explore how the New York Times navigates AI in its newsroom policies and practices.
“I can't let you leave without asking about AI.”
Transformation of Newsroom Operations
1:03:10 to 1:03:38
Learn about the ambitious multimedia transformation planned for the New York Times.
“And it's imperative for us to be able to translate the good work that we're doing into the forms that people who are open-minded about that want to consume their journalism in.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02Peter Kafka:One day, with the help of science, you might be able to live forever. Forever. Your body will just need a couple tune-ups. Injecting bone marrow in your 40s, your kidney in your 50s, your heart in your 60s, and so on. And then potentially a whole body transplant by the time that you were 90. This week on Explain It To Me, the quest for longevity. Find new episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts.
0:36Peter Kafka:from the vox media podcast network this is channels with peter kofka that is me i'm also chief correspondent at business insider and today we're talking about running the world's most important news organization that would be the new york times and the man running it or most of it really is executive editor joe khan khan has been in that job since 2022 a lot of the coverage of his tenure since then is about how the Times covers some hot-button issues and how that has changed under him. And we'll talk about that in this conversation too. But if you get to ask the executive editor of the New York Times some questions, you want to ask as many questions as you can.
1:14Peter Kafka:So I did. We talk a lot about the nuts and bolts of the Times, like how and how much people get paid, what games like World do and don't do for the Times, and how the Times does and doesn't use AI and how that could change in the future. That also means we talked a lot about video, which surprised me a bit. You can tell The Times cares a lot about video these days because there's a video on The Times homepage almost every day. But Khan says this is more than just getting some print reporters to sit for an occasional interview. He says it's a real transformation at The Times. So let's listen to him talk about it in his own words.
1:50Peter Kafka:Here's me talking to The Times' Joe Khan. I'm here with Joe Kahn, the executive editor of the New York Times. Welcome, Joe. Yeah. Thank you, Peter. Delighted to join you. You've had this job for four years. I describe it as the most important job in journalism and the top editor at the most important news organization in the world. But tell us what that job is, just to do some level setting. What do you do during the day, day to day? What's your big picture focus? Because I think I get it, but I think a lot of people listening to this won't. So, I'm executive editor of the New York Times Newsroom, which now has roughly 2 ,200 journalists.
2:34So I oversee the New York Times news report every day, which means first and foremost, really thinking really hard about what we're prioritizing in terms of our coverage that shows up now primarily in the sort of hierarchy of the big stories that we're covering digitally. Obviously, we still have a print edition as well, so we care about that. But what is most important in this kind of multimedia age is showcasing our best journalism in the most prominent spots in our digital experience every day and making a series of decisions about what we're doing and who's doing it and how to prioritize our coverage that we think is the best original reporting on those subjects.
3:24Peter Kafka:And then big picture, I mean, you just announced you hired a new editor for T Magazine, which maybe folks aren't paying attention to day to day. But just give us an idea of the full remit because it includes a lot of stuff and then doesn't include a few things. So the New York Times newsroom, of course, is sort of grew out of the traditional New York Times newspaper, which itself was a bundle, you know, which itself included a Sunday magazine and what we call Tea Magazine, which is our fashion and design and lifestyle magazine. magazine. And yes, we just named a new and very talented editor of Tea, who herself is a New York Times veteran and returning to the Times after many years, most recently at New York Magazine, Jody Kwan, who I think is going to be a spectacular editor of Tea.
4:13So it includes Tea and the New York Times Sunday Magazine and the New York Times newspaper, and then the digital operation of the New York Times, which is the heart and soul of the newsroom today.
4:26Peter Kafka:And the stuff that's not in there is the op-ed section, which we'll talk about a little later. The opinion section in general, including op-ed or what we now call guest essays, is a separate part of the New York Times news organization that reports directly to the publisher and not to the editor. And then obviously you don't control the business side. That's Meredith Levy and the CEO. I am freed from the duties of, I spend the money, I don't make it. But you still have to keep an eye on it. We'll talk about that too. What do people, what do you think outsiders misunderstand about your job? Well, I would say something that outsiders don't always understand or perhaps understand and don't want to understand in this moment is the role of really good original reporting and independent journalism in a moment like the one that we're in, a deeply polarized moment where I have a deep commitment as editor to make sure that we're making people smarter in a well-rounded way about the issues that they feel most passionate about.
5:31And the more passionate people feel, the more work we have to do to explore those issues from a variety of perspectives, which almost inevitably infuriates some subset of our readership because they want to see the New York Times or their news organization of choice often affirming their beliefs as opposed to informing them of things that potentially challenge their beliefs. So in many ways, the hardest part of the job is just continuously challenging ourselves to explore issues as fully and independently as possible, even when the feedback that you're getting from readers, from people in your peer group is often, why can't you do more stuff that just holds so-and-so to account or that goes after the bad guys or what they see as the bad guys?
6:28And I still see it as our responsibility to make everybody somewhat smarter about perspectives that aren't necessarily their own, but are worth at least considering in the course of sort of examining the issues that we're all confronting.
6:44Peter Kafka:I want to come back to that idea. I said in the intro, the New York Times is the most powerful news organization in the world. You nodded your head. Do you comfortable with that description? I mean, I will say, and you know this well, Peter, there are a large number of really good news organizations out there. We write a lot about the death of the news media and local newspapers and regional newspapers in particular, but also local broadcasts are under a lot of pressure. But we have a lot of really good, motivated, mission-driven competition out there in the world from, you know, the wire services, you know, some of our peer legacy companies from the newspaper heritage, but also broadcast, you know, which is.
7:31That said, I think we, in my view, are in something of a sweet spot in terms of where news media is headed because we have a very large and growing roster of talented journalists, beat reporters, experts, well-sourced people in many different areas, whether it's geographies or topics, you know, from the White House to wellness, essentially. And that is the core of an engine of original reporting, which I think can show up in a variety of different media forms, obviously text, but also in video, in audio, in, you know, kind of graphics and visualizations where we have the ability to tell stories really however people want to get those stories and understand the news.
8:26And I think that we're in a better position to deliver on that than any other news organization out there.
8:33Peter Kafka:I mean, you're bigger, you're more successful, the giant staff, you're financially stable, which was not the case not that long ago. But I think in the olden days, sort of the idea would be the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and maybe the L.A. Times would be in competition for whatever the biggest stories were that day. And if the Journal or the Post scooped you guys, you'd be upset. You'd figure out how to come back. I'm still upset. Still upset. But what does that universe look like to you now? What are you reading in the morning besides the Times? Those same, you know, largely those same peer competitors.
9:08I know the Post has been through, obviously, a period of significant turmoil, but they're still doing really good reporting on many subjects that we care deeply about, about Washington. And I think the Wall Street Journal is in a strong position with a strong staff and they're making smart editorial decisions. You know, I see organizations like Bloomberg coming up, you know, very often with smart, you know, business oriented, but not limited to business. They're doing a lot of great original reporting. digital news organizations like Axios are smart and have hired a lot of first-rate reporters and they present their journalism in easily accessible form.
9:52So I feel, and I read all of those and I read a bunch of substacks and I - What's your substack of choice? You know - What did you read this morning? There's this John Ellis puts together a kind of news nuggets substack every day, which I always – there's always something in there that I otherwise would have missed. You know, he reads very, very widely and summarizes in a very pithy way. I find that very useful in the morning. I saw something there this morning.
10:26Peter Kafka:So on the one hand, there's a lot of competition, a lot of places people can get news. On the other hand, you mentioned this, the business underpinning a lot of this stuff is kind of fragile. The Post has gone through a whole bunch of retrenchment. What does that mean in terms of managing your staff? Because it used to be not very long ago that one of the best ways to get a raise or promotion at the Times was to get an offer from The Washington Post or similar. I'm assuming those offers are harder to get and it makes it harder for someone to negotiate with you guys internally. How do you think about that?
11:01There are still organizations out there that are making offers to our people. And there are also opportunities, as you know well, for journalists who make a name for themselves at the Times, you know, potentially to go out independently and try to capitalize on that, whether it's on Substack or starting a show of some kind. And, you know, so there is obviously a pathway and we're still in a competitive environment for talent. You can't just tell people, look, we all know you're not going. You're staying. You're going to stay at The Times. And so let's. I hope most of them will. I mean, I think the idea is not just obviously that you have no place to go because you do have places to go.
11:48but that being part of this kind of engine of journalism actually has a ton of benefits. For one, for those who really care about the story, the best reporters at the end of the day are pretty collaborative. You know, putting a great, you know, reporter on camera video together, you know, doing a big investigation that makes the best use of sort of data research and data visualizations. These are not one person shows anymore. These are team efforts. And there's no better place if you care about doing journalism in the fullest way than to do it at the Times. We also have the best legal staff in the business.
12:33We have the best security team in the business. We can keep you safe. We'll protect you if you get a backlash to what you're doing and are taken to court. If you really care about doing big, impactful journalism, you're a little bit – you're just much better off in a much more committed, mission-driven environment at The New York Times than you would be almost any place else.
12:55Peter Kafka:Traditionally, the line about The Times was, it's a great job. It's prestigious. You won't make as much as you could make somewhere else. And I'm curious. When you guys reported about yourselves, you did this story about Diana Rossini. the reporter who left The Athletic under controversy, and there was a line there about her making$800 ,000 a year, and that raised everyone's eyebrows. What was the internal discussion about that when that number became public? Were there people knocking on your door saying, if Diane Rossini can make that much, I should be able to make at least half that much or the same amount as she does?
13:31It was a notable figure. I think one of the things, you know, Peter, it's worth mentioning, The Athletic is one of the parts of the New York Times company that isn't directly part of the New York Times newsroom. We purchased The Athletic several years ago. It has its own editor and its publisher. And we run that separately at arm's length. And it's a sports news organization which is committed to doing really good, actually, journalism, but directed at sports fans. So it's in-depth on teams and leagues. It's a different beast. It's a different beast. And it operates according to a very high set of principles, but not identical to the ones that the New York Times newsroom does.
14:20So, you know, they have recruited, you know, some sort of insider style journalists who are compensated appropriately. And, you know, that's different from the Times newsroom. So I don't think I'm not getting that direct comparison. You guys have star reporters of your own.
14:40Peter Kafka:Some of them have a book out right now. I mean, I could imagine various people on your staff saying, I am a Diana Rossini of Washington coverage or name your thing. Yeah. And I deserve I deserve that same kind of comp. Yeah, I haven't had anybody suggest that directly to me. Obviously, people care about their compensation and we want to pay them fairly and incentivize them properly. and we do have some really top talent in the New York Times and we're developing a system that makes sure that people are compensated fairly and incentivized to stay and at the same time reflects the fact that we have a much larger and more extensive organization behind them than would be the case almost anywhere else.
15:26So they are benefiting from being part of a larger organization that costs a lot of money to run. So if you're just looking for the maximum individual comp that you can possibly get out there on the market based on your individual name, the New York Times may not be the best place for you. But we want very top talent to feel like they're invested in the whole and benefiting from the fact that they're at the New York Times. They have the platform of the New York Times and they're benefiting from the new staff that we have and the original reporting that we do. So I don't think it's like, you know, we've always lived, for example, in the environment where people can go and be a television anchor and broadcast and make a multiple of what they could make as a journal.
16:10And that's still going to be the case for some time to come. But we will pay very well and we do pay very well by the standards of the news media industry for our top talent. And we have a differentiated pay scale based on merit within our system.
16:25Peter Kafka:You mentioned sub stacks. A lot of edit and business leaders that come into this room and talk to me say they're very interested in trying to figure out how to work with Substack stars or individual creators, however you want to describe them, and trying to figure out how they can run their publication but also bring in outside voices that have their own following and their own comp. Is that something that you're interested in or do you want the Times to be the place where you read stuff from people at the Times and sort of it's a clear line? Yeah, we're not looking to have, you know, full-time staff split their loyalties between, you know, our...
17:05Peter Kafka:I guess I'm thinking, what if... I always use Emily Sundberg as the stand-in, but you can use anybody. Anyone with notoriety and fame and influence who's got their own sub-stack. I'm just using sub-stack generically. And says, I don't want to work at the New York Times, but, you know, maybe there's a way to work with them. And then the New York Times is of the world are saying, we really wish we could work with these people. They have following. We think there's some value exchange we can do. Yeah. I think that there are ways for people who, you know, have sub stacks and care about their own individual audience within sub stack to do to make contributions to the New York Times.
17:42But I don't think we're in the business of making, you know, special deals to have people split their time between sub stack and the times. I know some are doing that. With the creator economy. But, you know, we're mainly looking for journalists who are all in. And spell out why.
17:58Peter Kafka:Why that distinction? Why are you pursuing a different path than a lot of your peers? We're, you know, we are a subscription news site. So we're driving, you know, our main focus is in driving a really engaged and large audience and ultimately a paying audience for the journalism that we do. I don't think that we want staff that's also trying to separately monetize an individual audience or that feels conflicted in that way. So it might work if somebody is not running a subscription news site and is partnering with someone who is running an individual subscription site off to the side. I don't think that the subscription business marries very well with somebody who's also doing a separate subscription business.
18:48Peter Kafka:I said, you've had this job for four years. When you took it there, you talked about this a lot. There's a lot of coverage about sort of one of your focuses was moving the times to the center. I don't think you necessarily use those words, but it was post George Floyd, post pandemic. And there was a lot of discussion about sort of excess during that time. And it seemed to be a focus of yours to sort of, you can say, move to the center, move to the right. However you want to describe the motion. Yeah, I wouldn't say specifically to the center or to the right. What I would say is that we want a really broad number of curious people, regardless of their own political leanings, to be able to get a lot of value out of the reporting that The New York Times does.
19:38And the best way to achieve that is to make sure that we have beat reporters and editors all over the newsroom who are looking at every area that we cover and asking themselves questions about what are we missing here? What's an angle on this story? What might be a perspective that someone might need to know or have explored with good reporting that will make them smarter about this? And that includes people who are coming to us from, you know, the left, from the right, from the center, you know, internationally who don't understand all the issues.
20:16Peter Kafka:But the general perception was you were talking about, you know, the Times is staffed with primarily liberal people. There's a litmus test to work there. There's definitely no litmus test to work. But it definitely, in your comments at the time where, you know, we're getting people who are coming out of college and they are expecting a safe space and not to be challenged. And it was generally directed at a sort of left-leaning group of people that you were talking about saying, we're going to upset you, whether you're an employee or a reader. We're going to ask you to do things or read things that you may not want to do or read.
20:49Peter Kafka:Is that a fair summary? I understand what you're getting at with the summary. It's not exactly fair because I think they do want to read those things. I think when we explore issues that are on polarizing topics and we do so from a variety of perspectives, those pieces of journalism do really well. So they are really well read. So it may be that people in some cases hope that we'll only cover things from the perspective that meets with their own preset set of expectations or beliefs about something. But actually, when we explore things from a variety of perspectives and maybe take in another point of view in the course of our coverage, that's actually really well read.
21:38It actually helps the journalism perform better. So it's not really like we're giving people things that they don't want to read. We are challenging people to think about the issues of the day from a variety of perspectives, including their own, but also others. People from other geographies, people from other experiences and background, people who potentially come at something from a secular perspective or a religious perspective. People who come at something from the left or the right, you know, who are passionate about something or skeptical about something. What are the different questions that people bring to bear about these issues and what can we do journalistically to try to highlight that?
22:19So if you call that going to the center, I don't exactly call it to the center. There are some times when we miss things on the left.
22:26Peter Kafka:And this is something you came to when you started this job in 2022. It seemed to be a reaction to the previous couple of years in particular. I think we all remember, you know, that period of sort of the intensity of the pandemic and the isolation that was facing people and the, you know, that kind of summer of fury around George Floyd and, you know, the presidential election and January 6th. I mean, those were really intense periods where emotions were running at a fever pitch and the coverage reflected that. As always, coverage will in those moments. I do think there was an opportunity for us after that, you know, to step back and just look at the range of, you know, commitments that we had to beat reporting, where people were positioned, the sorts of stories that we were covering to make sure that we had that kind of full news report.
23:26And we did invest heavily in that, both in terms of adding to our staff and filling out the roster of our journalism, but also consistently day in and day out asking ourselves tough questions. Are we missing something here? Is there a perspective we need to pursue? And I think as a result, we do have a more well-rounded report that I think serves our readership better.
23:49Peter Kafka:So you took that job in 2022 and 2023 of the October 7th attacks. In 2024, you have the election. And in both both those stories, you were getting a ton of criticism for coverage, for choices, for headlines. When it comes to Gaza and Israel, it's sort of both sides are upset with you for various reasons. A lot of people on the left were upset with you about the way you covered Biden, but didn't cover Trump or the way you covered Trump. But it wasn't however they thought you should have covered it. Same thing with trans issues and your general the way I'm going to summarize it. But it seemed to be your reaction to those criticisms was the people who are making these critiques are activists, essentially.
24:29Peter Kafka:And you want your news to reflect a certain point of view. And thus, if you're complaining, we're going to kind of ignore you, essentially. He didn't say those words. I think he did use the word activist. Essentially, if you're complaining, it's because you don't like the reality that we're presenting. You want us to present a different reality. I wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't say that exactly. I do. We get a lot of criticism, as you know, and on some issues, we're getting intensive criticism from seemingly opposite sides. So that is true. And to some extent, in those moments, those things can cancel each other out to some degree, because it's impossible to please everybody all the time, particularly on a motive issue like, you know, the Gaza war, for example.
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25:19There's going to be intense emotions on all sides. And to some extent, I do think the editor needs to tune some of that out and just follow the journalism, follow the facts, follow the stories, do the best that we can from whatever perspective without worrying too much about how those things will land. Because if you're worried too much about how your audience reacts, you're going to kind of lose the North Star journalistically, in my view. Which is the challenge when you run a subscription site, right?
25:46Peter Kafka:People are paying you for something. But I believe deeply that people are paying us at the end of the day for doing that good journalism and following what we think will be the most compelling stories. They're not necessarily the loudest part of the audience, but they're the most important part of the audience, which are people who are still curious and open-minded and want fact-based reporting. That's the most important part. If you don't want that or if you're angry that we're doing that, you're never going to be satisfied with the New York Times because that's the core of our mission. I actually think that most of those people who are even among the loudest critics actually do want us to be doing that work.
26:29They don't always say that they want us to be doing the work, but they do. And they respect it when we do because we have authority and because we are accurate and because we help expose things that wouldn't otherwise be known to the public. And that's the first and foremost, the most important role of a good news media organization.
26:47Peter Kafka:In the last election, there was a strain of critique that said Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, press freedom, lots of other things. And the Times is not being loud enough about that. And your answer was, our job is to report the facts. It's essentially what you just said now. Not to tell you what to do. We're not going to be prescriptive. Given what's happened in the Trump administration since his election and a lot of these, you know, a lot of the concerns about the press freedom, for instance, have been borne out. Do you have any regrets about your about the Times coverage in 2024?
27:24Peter Kafka:Do you ever wish I wish we'd been a little louder or more forthright about some of the stuff that might be happening under a Trump administration? I think we were ahead of everybody else in giving people a preview of what was going to happen after a victory in 2024 by Donald Trump. I mean, our coverage of Project 2025, you mentioned Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, but Charlie Savage as well and a big team of people who devoted a huge amount of resources and reporting to telling our readers what was in Trump's mind and what was in his staff and his future cabinet's agenda in terms of retribution against enemies, in terms of the immigration and deportation agenda, his skepticism about NATO and his desire to do something fundamentally to shift the U.S.
28:19role in the world, his continued kind of sympathy for Vladimir Putin and his skepticism about Ukraine. All of those things were amply forecast in The New York Times, I think more prominently than in any other news organization. They provided our readership and our audience with as much or more information than you will ever get about an incoming presidential candidate. So I think we more than did our job in informing the public about, you know, the whether you like it or hate it. What a second Donald Trump president.
28:58Peter Kafka:When people complain and you've got the receipts and you can say, look, we've published all the stuff you said we didn't publish and we published a lot and we published it on the homepage. Do you think they are really complaining about the fact that it wasn't prominent enough or it should have been louder or used a bigger font for the headline? Or do you think they're unhappy with something else and you're the thing they can complain about? You'll have to have some of them on your show. I'm honestly not always sure. I think people do. And, you know, I take this seriously. I think people think we're a leading news organization and they want to see us as prominently as possible flagging, highlighting, emphasizing the issues that they care about the most.
29:43And I get that. That is, it's a natural response. If we weren't important, if we were a niche publication off on the side, they wouldn't be that worried about what we're doing. Coming together with the responsibility of being one of the leading news organizations in the world is also the scrutiny saying, hey, you played this story above that story. But this other story was the most important one. Why wasn't this the lead of the website or on the front page yesterday? Of course that comes with it. People are second guessing. People want to see the things that they care about the most highlighted, you know, emphasized with the biggest font, with the largest headline at the top of the homepage above the fold.
30:24Peter Kafka:I get that. How do you reality check yourself? How do you or sanity check yourself or whatever the right term is? I'm saying because you don't want to reflexively say any complaints are because you're a hater, essentially. Sometimes they're right. I mean, so how do you how do you how do you sort of process? Well, maybe they got a point there versus now this is this is someone who's always going to be angry. Look, we kind of process. We talked to the beginning about this is a 24 seven news operation. So, you know, we have incoming information, including feedback all the time. Basically, people saying the New York Times isn't doing enough with this story.
31:03I get emails to my inbox. Reporters and other editors are getting feedback all the time. Sometimes you'll see that and say, wait a minute. I think we did underplay this. Or we are underplaying it. Or maybe our headline doesn't fully capture this. What's an example where you've gone back and gone, oh, they have a point.
31:21Peter Kafka:Let's rethink this headline or this story or this coverage. I mean, there's 10 of them today, honestly, right? I mean, where I wake up at six o 'clock in the morning and take a look at our at our at our site and wonder, what do we need now to reflect the fact, you know, we just we just commissioned a story this morning on the aftermath of the U.S. loss in the World Cup after Trump's really dramatic intervention. where does that leave sort of people's enthusiasm for soccer and the sense of Trump in the world? He's headed off to NATO today. We didn't have a story this morning that directly addressed all of that, but we commissioned one and we will have one.
32:05I mean, that kind of give and take. Thank you for serving me because that's the story that I wanted to read. Well, and I got some feedback saying, hey, you know, what's the meld of these two things? You know, kind of Trump's intervention and the U.S. loss and where does that kind of leave us? So we will have something on that. But that's the kind of thing where you're looking in real time. We don't have a perfect picture once a day the way people's image of a newspaper is. We have an ever-evolving one where some of that is audience feedback. Some of that is new information that's coming in. But we're constantly evolving and commissioning new pieces of journalism and tweaking headlines and trying to get it right as best we can based on the information that we have in that moment.
32:46Peter Kafka:We'll be right back with Joe Kahn. But first, a word from a sponsor.
32:55Is Donald Trump still cool? Well, at first, there's what he was promising to America. He was promising change. Yes, promising a big change. Has he lived up to that? No. No. I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't say so at all. I'm disappointed. We're in Washington, D.C. for one of the events that Donald Trump is throwing for America's 250th anniversary, and it's UFC night.
33:14Peter Kafka:Proud to be American. We got free tickets. It's just going to be a great time. That's about it. It's an opportunity to talk to a group that was central in the 2024 election, young men. Why do we think Trump and men seem to have a connection? I feel like he just knows how to advertise himself for the younger proud. It aligns with masculinity, I feel like, to a certain extent. But if they don't like Donald Trump, what do they prefer politically otherwise? I care about my family. I care about my country. I want people to be safe and happy where they live. I care about my wallet too, man. I'm Estet Herndon, and this is America Actually.
33:47Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
34:17grow or don't for conversations about what creates value and what destroys it. It's a business show. It's a marketing show. Creator destroys the show that argues. They've always been the same thing from the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdomist Company. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. As America reaches its 250th anniversary, how should Americans assess their country's strength relative to the rest of the world.
34:47Peter Kafka:We're moving into a genuinely multipolar world, and that's a world in which every nation is basically for itself, because nations can no longer rely on the United States to protect them. I'm John Feiner. And I'm Jake Sullivan. And we're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week, we sat down with historian and foreign policy expert Bob Kagan to assess America's role in the world at 250 and the future of American power. The episode's out now. Search for and follow The Long Game wherever you get your podcasts.
35:21Peter Kafka:And we're back. I want to switch over to the business of the times, which you don't run, but you still have to operate. I care about it. You spend the money. There's this flip idea, but I think people take it seriously. It's just a cliche. You know it. The New York Times is a games company that has also a newspaper attached to it. And I know you don't believe that because you're not running the game. Well, because it's not true. So explain explain what is wrong about that, because there is right there. There are effective infographics that show time spent on games much higher than on the news report.
35:58Peter Kafka:And if you look at your subscription data up through last year, it looked like the non news part of the times was growing in terms of subscriptions faster than the core news part of the of the times. almost any way that you look at it and cut it the the core news business of the New York Times is far and away the most important part of the New York Times company as well as the sort of defining center of the mission of the New York Times our colleagues in games I mean games we are super lucky to have you know our affiliation with a games team that first of all grew out of the New York Times newsroom, grew out of the newspaper when crossword was invented by the New York Times as a news organization has always wanted to provide a variety of experiences to people, including things that will be fun, things that will be brain teasers, things that will keep you engaged in other ways.
36:56Recipes also grew out of the New York Times newspaper. So these are organic, they actually are organic growth out of the news organization. Today, the company has made a big investment in continuing to develop those games, and they are a point of entry for a lot of people. The biggest games that are out there, the most popular games, are still free. Wordle. Wordle is still free for the internet to play. So it is a kind of a top-of-the-funnel draw for many millions of people every day.
37:30Peter Kafka:We're happy to have people come play Wordle for free in the hope that some of them will eventually subscribe to The Times. And also, we understand that people who subscribe to The Times also want to play Wordle. Exactly. And there are some people who play Wordle who ultimately become subscribers to games or get, you know, kind of habituated on other games. Some also, you know, will get more exposed to the journalism that we're doing. But in terms of actually what's driving subscriptions, what is driving the revenue from subscriptions and the loyalty from subscribers, The news product is still very much the sun under which these other satellite products revolve around as opposed to being we're a games company.
38:11And I think, Peter, if you think about it, you don't really think about us as a games company. You're not having me on your podcast to talk about games. I have a great colleague who does go out and talk about games, Jonathan Knight. He's head of games. And there are a lot of enthusiasts at games, particularly these kind of brain teaser kind of games. And they do great work. but I don't think it's the definition of the New York Times company. I don't think it's how most people think about or spend their time with the New York Times. They think very much of us as a news organization because commercially, editorially, in terms of mission, in terms of identity, news is very much the center of the company.
38:48Peter Kafka:Games, recipes, audio, this idea of sort of adding things to the bundle to make it more attractive. Is there anything you wouldn't add to the bundle that you know flat out, look, people have come to us with this, you added The Athletic, where you'd say that might make sense financially and it does not fit with what we want to do with the times. And do you have the power to nix a proposed expansion or new category? I mean, ultimately adding, you know, especially acquiring some kind of other product that would be potentially part of the bundle and a complementary part of the bundle would be, you know, a decision for the leadership of the company.
39:29And I'm part of the leadership of the company. So I'd probably have some voice in that. Ultimately, it would be A.G. Sulzberger and Meredith Coppia-Levian who make the decisions on finance. But the editor has a seat at the table. And I do believe that the overall identity of the New York Times matters. So, you know, if there's a satellite product, we want it to be something that represents the brand value, the journalistic value. All of the things that we've invested in, by the way, do have journalistic value. Games have journalists who are editors. Wirecutter is a news organization that covers products and makes recommendations.
40:15Cooking has expert food journalists who are testing and refining recipes and creators who are sharing their ideas. The Athletic, of course, is a large sports journalism newsroom that's carefully edited and presented. All of these things are journalistic products. So if something came along that didn't feel journalistic at all, but potentially money making - A dating site. Yeah. I don't think I would be interested. I don't think AG or Meredith would be interested in that. We want things that are complimentary that really feel like they belong together in a bundle.
40:51Peter Kafka:there's a ton of video on the times home page right now if you go to the home page right now there's tyler prager talking about the nato so yeah um that is something new lots of folks have remarked on it i think i talked to ag about it but i'm curious what what do you think the value of having video on the site is is it for the existing readers is to bring in new readers i'm I'm using the word reader. Yeah. It's the wrong word. What is the point of it? So that actually is the biggest and most important transformation that's underway now in the newsroom is the what we believe is our own proprietary formula for integrating great video journalism with the rest of our journalism.
41:41And that, I believe, has the potential to allow us to bring really good quality original reporting to a much larger audience than we currently have.
41:55Peter Kafka:What does that mean? Does it mean more people will come to the Times because there's video on it or that video will be distributed on TikTok and Reels? Both. It's both a way to push journalism out to a wide demographic of curious people out there on the internet who are preferring now to get news and information in short video form with a direct conversational kind of approach from an expert journalist. Or to be taken directly to the scene of a news event and exposed directly to what that individual is seeing and reporting at the time. It's traveling very well on, you know, TikTok and Instagram and YouTube shorts.
42:51But it's also performing very well on our own site and increasingly is very seamlessly integrated into the journal, into the storytelling that we have.
43:01Peter Kafka:Is a video, is someone who's watching video on the New York Times different than someone who's reading the New York Times? Are you guys able to sort of understand the audience for that? On our own site, no. We're getting, you know, really good reaction from subscribers who are reading and watching. Off platform, I do think we are reaching an audience that is not at least now habituated to reading long form journalism, but is very open to having a journalist who has spent, you know, days, weeks, sometimes months reporting on a certain subject. give them a two or three minute summary of that work.
43:49And in two or three minutes, actually, you can convey quite a bit of really valuable information. Those are doing enormously well in people's feeds and are introducing people to our journalists, the work that they're doing. It's long arc work. It doesn't lead. It's not part of the link economy the way Google search was.
44:08Peter Kafka:So you don't believe people are watching a New York Times video on TikTok and then moving over to the Times to read more? There's no way of tracking it the way we could track links that are exposed on Google. And there wasn't much of that when you could track the links, right? When Facebook and Twitter were – Well, social media and Google search were enormous sources of off-platform traffic for us and still are, especially Google search. It's declining, but it's still a very large source. We know that people who discover journalism through Google will come and interact with that journalism directly.
44:42And some of those become habituated readers. There's less of a direct pathway for these videos, but we're not worried about that in the moment. What we're worried about in the moment is making sure that we compete with really good quality journalism on these platforms, which are otherwise being inundated, as you've reported well, with slop.
45:03Peter Kafka:So you want to be there. Branding is maybe the wrong word, but maybe it's not the wrong word. To say, we're the New York Times. We're delivering good information. You may not show up on our site for a long time, but we want you to know we're here. I agree with that. I think the - And you're not monetizing that for the most part. There's no immediate way to monetize that. And we're not worried about monetizing it now. I believe strongly that as people get more exposed to high quality reporting and information on their feeds in the form that they want, they will ultimately want to turn. They'll want more of that.
45:43It will raise their expectations for what good reporting is. It will differentiate us from sort of influencers who are not doing original reporting, and it will help seed the environment for quality news and information. Sometimes the people will need to go and seek out, but we will also go and present it to them in the place that they want it to be.
46:04Peter Kafka:Journalists have all kinds of different skills. Some are better reporters than they are writers. Some people are good on camera. What happens at the Times as you're making this video push with reporters who are great and maybe just not good on camera or not comfortable on camera or don't want to be on camera? How should they be thinking about their careers? There will be plenty of reporters who ultimately – reporters and editors who don't have a video presence. We're not insisting that everybody does. At the moment, we have a little bit the opposite problem. This is a huge investment for us. but the demand to have video to accompany the good journalism that we're doing is sort of exceeding the supply of it that we can do.
46:49We're building up. You've got people knocking on your door and saying, I want to be on camera. Yeah, I mean, we're adding scores of video journalists, both in centralized teams and integrating them into the operation on all the news desks that we have in order to have more ability to do video-first journalism in these moments and to make sure that our best journalism has video components. Sometimes it will be video journalism. Sometimes there will be text and video or other forms in video. But the capacity to do that, I mean, you know, an individual journalist and a couple of editors can produce a piece of text journalism.
47:32You have to multiply that times two or three to get a good reporter on camera video that's two minutes long, that's integrating graphics, that's integrating clips. That number is probably going to come down. I hope it will come down as we get more efficient, but they are more intensive to produce. So this is a huge investment and transformation for our newsroom as we try to do more of this at scale. You've already started to see some of the scale because it's available every day. We actually have a watch feed in the New York Times app now. So for people who just want to TikTok style scroll through.
48:08Most people exist who I want to watch TikTok style videos on the New York Times. Quite a few. There are times of the day when people are busy. Maybe they're on an elevator or they're on a train and they just kind of want to watch. They don't have time to read. And we're seeing pretty good take up for that. And, you know, that is a scaling process. And over the next couple of years, you're going to see that scale pretty massively.
48:30Peter Kafka:We'll be right back with The New York Times' Joe Kahn. But first, a word from a sponsor. I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, on a botulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Allerge your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition.
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49:43Peter Kafka:And we're back. You've talked about wanting the New York Times brand to be more accessible. That's why you're on TikTok, et cetera. There's people who are familiar with the New York Times and the division of labor and how opinion is different than news report. And there's, I think, everybody else who just thinks it's all one thing. There was a Nick Kristof piece about accusations of rape in Gaza by the Israeli military and settlers. A lot of controversy about that that was ran in the opinion section. Would that story have run the same format with all the same facts in the news report? I mean, it's a little bit of a hypothetical.
50:19Nick, as you know, is an opinion columnist. He's also a very accomplished New York Times foreign correspondent who made his name in various overseas assignments in China, around the world, reporting out of Africa, Japan. He's a very accomplished journalist. In his opinion column, he also does a lot of original reporting on the road. So Nick has his own brand and area of expertise. And that piece was edited by our opinion section. It wasn't edited by the newsroom. So it's distinct, but it's not, you know, it's not a categorical difference. You know, it's impossible to say whether we would have done the identical piece.
51:10We probably wouldn't have because it's not, you know, Nick has a particular focus on kind of human rights and war. And it is kind of part of his area of focus as a columnist. So to say, would we have done that exact piece? No, we wouldn't have done that exact piece. But we've reported, we have reported very similarly on abuses in the Israeli prison system. We have also reported on sexual abuses by Hamas against Israeli prisoners or against Israelis during the October 7th attack. So we've reported on sexual abuse on both sides of that. And every time we do it, it excites a lot of controversy. Nick's piece did as well.
51:52This one happened to be done by the opinion section by him as a columnist. But I have confidence in my opinion colleagues that they edit with rigor.
52:00Peter Kafka:You mentioned John Swan and Maggie Haberman. They've got this book out. It is astonishingly a fast turnaround for a book. It's written more or less real time about the Trump administration. Whenever star reporters like this come out with a book, especially when it's about Trump and other high profile stuff, you guys get a critique saying, well, why is all this information in a book and not in the New York Times? It seems to me that you made a concerted effort to handle that this time around. there were excerpts coming out way earlier than the book was published. Was that intentional because you knew you were going to get that criticism or because this book was a particularly different beast?
52:39Jonathan and Maggie, both of them are so all in on reporting. They had a book leave and reporters every once in a while asked for and earn a book leave and they did have a book leave. You might not have known that by reading the New York Times over the year.
52:57Peter Kafka:I noticed that Maggie was absent for quite some time. But she was still big presence in the report. She was in close touch with us about what she was finding. She's a great colleague. She was always feeding stuff to people. And you're right. Their book came out kind of at warp speed for the book publishing industry. They also had some degree of sort of almost breaking news in their book, including an excerpt that we had on the run-up to the Iran conflict. Yeah, inside the situation. Inside the situation room, which we published an excerpt of. We did a couple of other excerpts. We had another excerpt actually just this morning.
53:37We had information extracted from the reporting that they did for their book about the Trump administration and the Smithsonian and the way that kind of conflict unfolded with the curators of the Smithsonian and pressure from Trump and J.D. Vance's role. So they're a magical team, honestly. They're very integrated to our report. They're terrific colleagues.
54:03Peter Kafka:Are they telling you, hey, we have this stuff. It's going to be in the book. We're not ready to publish it now. But, you know, just be aware this is coming in two months or three months. And are they collaborating with you as they're writing the book? Yes. You know, they're reporting actively for the book. They're in touch with us throughout that process. And do you always say, well, no, run that now? You know, when you're dealing with good reporters like Maggie and Jonathan, really have a high degree of confidence in their own judgment about when they really have something versus something that they may be hearing and reporting out but isn't fully baked.
54:44You know, they're talking to many different people. Getting full confirmation of things is hard. and they're trying to do that in real time as they close chapters for their book, where they really think they have something that feels like it's timely and it's perishable, as that Situation Room account was, they moved heaven and earth to give us that excerpt. They came to you and said, this should run in the paper report. Yeah. So we were in close touch about that. They were, you know, they did great work to try to get that book out quickly, but they also kept thinking about us and our report and make sure that their competitive information was in the report as quickly as it could be.
55:29So, and that was a great example, actually, of how, you know, I'm a little bit reluctant, honestly, as editor to grant too many book leaves because we lose key people in key moments like that. And if I had my druthers, we wouldn't have so many people who wanted to go and do books. But if I had to point to an example of where two great reporters had a commitment to do a book together, but also a continued commitment to make sure our report was competitive, this was it. That's the model. This is the model.
56:01Peter Kafka:I can't let you leave without asking about AI. You guys have a mostly no AI in the newsroom policy, but then you can kind of use it for some stuff? I wouldn't say we have a mostly no AI in the newsroom. We've drawn some red lines, but we actively want people to be gaining experience with the ways in which AI tools can enhance what they do. The red lines include essentially we believe that journalism needs at every stage of the process to have human editorial oversight. So we're not going to entrust any individual part of the process to AI without human supervision. But and and we also believe that when you're doing any original journalism, the first draft should be human made.
56:56Peter Kafka:So I can't assemble my notes and turn to chat GPT and say, help me structure this into a piece. Particularly not chat GPT for various reasons. Not the company you're suing, but let's say another L. But any tool that potentially is searching the entire internet, right? Because the original journalism that we're doing wants to be truly original. What AI does is gather information from other published sources, essentially, and spit it back to you. So if you're doing in the first order a piece of journalism that potentially includes information from other sources but not properly attributed, that's going to get you in trouble.
57:38So using AI to help refine something that you have originally drafted from your own work is something that we're experimenting. So here's a draft that I've written. Right. What do you think of it, Claude? Yeah. I mean, you know, I wouldn't mind if journalists occasionally do that and say, hey, you know, could I convey this information a little bit more quickly, you know, and taking less time, a little shorter form? What would be some suggestions for that. Whatever those suggestions are, you have to process it yourself as a human journalist, but actually using that for feedback should be fine. Have I kind of presented this in the most compelling way?
58:20Where would a reader get bogged down in this? Where would I lose their focus and interest?
58:24Peter Kafka:Your primary concern is originality and where did this come from and do we know it's true? A, original work is the most important thing and that original work is done by of human beings and B, that any input or refinement or research that you get from AI to enhance that work needs to be human verified. Have you changed your standards or relaxed them? I mean, ChatGPT is going to be, what, three years old this fall? Still a very new technology. We don't have an agreement. We have a lawsuit against ChatGPT. You're well aware of that. I'm using them generically, but yes. Open AI. So we encourage within our guidelines the use of tools where we have an agreement to protect our copyrighted information and our proprietary information.
59:14Peter Kafka:And if you were to settle that lawsuit or prevail in the lawsuit against opening, however it's going to get resolved one way or the other, that then opens up the use of those tools in the newsroom? Potentially, yeah. There are a wide variety of tools that can be used in the newsroom now. In particular, we have widespread use of Google's Gemini, but also Notebook LM and a variety of other tools. And I hope over time there will be more of those that are sort of inside the authorized suite. Are prediction markets interesting to you? A lot of other news organizations are doing deals with Kelshi and Polymarket and presenting data from them to readers.
59:53I think we'll be pretty cautious about that, honestly. I think that the, you know, it's a great story what's happening with prediction markets and understanding how they work and their integration with big events and how they're potentially affecting those events. I don't think that we want, you know, a direct link between our journalism and prediction markets or providing journalism that would provide fuel for the prediction markets at this point.
1:00:25Peter Kafka:We do, you know, it's sort of happening anyway, right? I mean, someone's reading the New York Times and that may inform their bet on Calci. It's just not a one-to-one collaboration between them. And people are welcome to read our report just as they always have been and go to the racing track and make a bet based on something that they learned. And they can do that with CalShare Polymarket. I don't think we're going to provide that link as part of our journalism. It's not the motivation for us to do the journalism. It's somebody's own personal use. We do look at the prediction markets and incorporate some of the data from them just as we would from like third party polls, you know, because they can be interesting contextualized.
1:01:08They can be interesting snapshots of sentiment about certain issues. So we're not ignoring them. It's just not directly integrated into our coverage or into our report.
1:01:18Peter Kafka:I want to come back to sort of where you've been at this job for the last four years and you'll have it for another four years, right? You're 61? We have a mandatory retirement age. Yeah, 65. From the top of the mastod. What's what's on that? What's the top of your to do list for the next four years? The you know, that transformation of the New York Times newsroom into what I expect will be, you know, the leading multimedia news organization where we're providing journalism in multiple forms. but also now including video first forms that serve a much larger leadership that wants to get their news and information in that form is a massive transformation.
1:02:02It's as big a transformation as the print to digital transformation that, you know, I and many others were involved in for the last, you know, 15 or 20 years. This is as big a structural adjustment for us and a priority in terms of our journalistic storytelling as that print to digital.
1:02:22Peter Kafka:I'm surprised to hear you put that much emphasis on it. I would think from my perspective, all right, you've got a dedicated team that makes videos and some of the reporters will be on camera. But you seem to think it's much more ambitious. Yeah, because I think it's going to touch every part of the newsroom and the way that we do a large subset of our stories. I think that we need to be prepared. We will always provide good journalism in text form, but the idea that we can just continue to refine the text form as people's viewing habits shift, I think is kind of head in the sand. I think we were in a race against time to make sure that good quality journalism competes with AI-generated slop and influencer-generated, non-original journalism out there on the internet.
1:03:17And it's imperative for us to be able to translate the good work that we're doing into the forms that people who are open-minded about that want to consume their journalism in. That's sort of an urgent transformation to me. And if in the next four years, it's going to take a lot longer four years to kind of realize it at scale, But if in the next four years we can make, you know, a really important down payment on integrating that into the core of the New York Times, I'll consider that to be a pretty significant transformation of the place.
1:03:51Peter Kafka:Okay. I'll be watching and reading and listening. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Joe. Thanks again to Joe Kahn. Thanks again to Charlotte Silver, who produces and edits this show. Thanks to our advertisers who bring this show to you for free. Thanks to you guys for listening. See you soon. m - armored
From the publisher
Joe Kahn runs the New York Times newsroom, which means he runs the most powerful news operation in the world. He joins me to talk about what that power is for — and why he thinks the Times’ next big transformation is video, and why the paper is in “a race against time” to compete with "AI-generated slop.” We also discuss whether the Times is really a Games company now, how he handles angry readers, why he’s wary of the creator economy, what star reporters are worth, and how the Times is using AI while suing OpenAI.
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