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Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Wednesday. Buying a house has long been considered the best way to build wealth and move into true adulting. Isn't it? I mean, at least that's what society wants us to think. Got to get a Birkin, got to get a home, you know. Okay, the handbag you can probably manage without. But what about a house? Surely that's actually good, right? We're going to find out.
This week on Explain It To Me. New episodes every Sunday morning, wherever you get your podcasts. From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels. I'm Peter Kafka. That is me. I'm also the chief correspondent at Business Insider. And today, I want to give credit where credit is due. Last September, A.G. Salzberger, he's the publisher of the New York Times, published an op-ed in the Washington Post.
Warning of a press crackdown if Donald Trump got re-elected. And more than that, detailing how that crackdown might work using playbooks we've seen established in countries like Hungary and India. Sadly, Salzburger got it right. Or at the very least, we're seeing the Trump administration pressure news organizations and their owners in ways we just haven't seen before, at least not from a U.S. president. And it's unclear how it's all going to play out.
I wanted to talk to Salzberger in detail about the predictions he made last fall and a whole bunch of other stuff, too, like why the Times chose to sue OpenAI instead of taking its cash, the importance of the paper's op-ed section, and how the paper may fare in what we're going to euphemistically call an uncertain economy. That's all in this conversation, and I'm glad I get to share it with you. Now here's me and A.G. Salzberger.
I'm here with A.G. Salzberger. He is the publisher of The New York Times. Welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. I don't think we've talked on a microphone for years and years. I think we did it at the Code Conference, like 2019. And that sounds like it was the last time. When Donald Trump was also president.
Yeah, I have to actually go back to the years, but that seems right. You were concerned about press freedom then. I want to ask you about that. But since we're recording us on Monday morning, the markets are in free fall again. Who knows what they'll be like in a couple days when this podcast comes out. I'm curious. You run a big company. How are you guys thinking about...
The economic turmoil and what that may or may not mean for the Times as a business. We're a long-term oriented business. I mean, really long-term. We're 174 years old. Part of the value of our unique structure is that we don't need to overreact to short-term pressures, whether those are economic pressures or pressures, you know. on the technological landscape and the journalistic landscape.
We have also worked really hard to get ourselves on strong financial footing. Right, you kind of moved your model from an ad-supported one to a reader-supported one, essentially. Yeah, yeah. And as you know... You know, you go back a decade, certainly 15 years, but even a decade ago.
People weren't sure that The New York Times was going to make it, right? We weren't on strong financial rounds. There were incredible publications wondering if you were going to go bankrupt. That's right. One famous. Magazine cover story suggested that we might go bankrupt in a matter of months. My predecessor and his team deserve a great deal of credit for...
Getting us back to strong financial footing, you know, some of it, you know, much of it was, you know, a shift in our business strategy, but also a shift in, you know, our willingness to embrace technology and, you know, and to innovate in how we do our journalism. in an economic position that we think is
you know, stronger for weathering. You're in as strong a shape as a news organization can be in this country in this moment. That said, have you guys had any conversation like, oh, if the markets tumble like this, this could do this to advertising? Or we might see softening subscriptions if people are really hanging on to their dollars. Or has that not happened yet? I mean, of course. You know, I...
have been a leader of a news organization in the 2020s, which means that my superpower is seeing doom around every corner. And that power has served me and I think the institution well. I think we have, we tend to... look at what could go wrong and try to prepare ourselves for that. So that's true on any of the fronts that we're likely to talk about today.
All right. Well, let's zoom out a little bit. Like I said, you've been concerned about press freedom in the U.S., internationally for a long time. When you spoke with me at Code years ago, that was top of mind for you. It's still top of mind for you. Last fall, you published an op-ed in the Washington Post called How the Quiet War Against Press Freedom Could Come to America.
What did you want to accomplish with that op-ed and why do you run it in a competitive newspaper? There's a bunch I can say about that. Is it useful to offer just a beat of history on it first, you know, about how I landed there? In President Trump's first term. I had a conversation with him. Actually, I had two conversations with him.
You went to the White House to make the case, right? Yeah. He had invited me to the White House. I accepted the invitation in part because I felt very strongly that someone needed to explain to him. the danger his anti-press rhetoric or the impact his anti-press rhetoric was having. And the danger it was likely to have in the future. At that time, he was using phrases like enemy of the people and fake news. He was accusing reporters of things like treason, a crime punishable by death.
And the case I made to him was, if you want to go after the New York Times, have at us. You want to go after me? Feel free to attack me by name and whatever channel if you're choosing. We're big enough. and establish enough and strong enough to take it. But I wasn't sure he was aware of the downstream effect his anti-press rhetoric was having at the local level in the United States, right? But particularly abroad.
particularly abroad in countries in which there is less of a tradition of free inquiry, of free expression, of a free press. And those are the very countries in which America has long determined it is most important. that America supports the essential democratic role of a free and independent press.
So the first time I sort of raised those concerns, the second time I went to the Oval Office, I told him we were already starting to see the negative effects, crackdowns, that we're using the president's own rhetoric. What was his reaction when you told him this? He claimed to have been surprised. He said that I was the only person who ever had raised this with him. He said that he wanted to be, he believed in the press, he wanted to be pro-press.
Then, of course, he moved quickly to his complaints about his own coverage and more. So I wouldn't describe it as the most productive conversation. But he didn't say, that's absolutely right. I want to stomp the press out. No, no, in fact, denied that. Right. But I felt it was really important to put it on the record. Now, since that time, we've now seen, I think, more than 70 countries pass.
laws that ostensibly crack down on quote-unquote fake news. And these are 70 laws that actually use that term, the term that President Trump repopularized. But they're not trying to crack down on fake news, as you or I would think about it. They're trying to crack down. On independent news that might expose misconduct. I mean independent from the government. Exactly. Exactly. That might expose misconduct by leaders, for example.
So we saw the crackdown that I feared in the years since those conversations. What's striking about this moment, right? President Trump, in his first term, brought a new level of anti-press rhetoric to this country. And then subsequently legitimized, implicitly encouraged a global anti-press crackdown. What we're seeing now in his second term, President Trump is importing some of the lessons.
and tactics and tools of those anti-press crackdowns that have been put in place abroad and bringing them here into the United States. That was the central concern that animated my piece in The Washington Post. Right, which you published last September. Yeah. Sort of like – and basically your main parallel. This is happening around the world, but you were really focused on Hungary, what Orban has done there. It's well worth reading.
It's prescient, right, because what you're describing in Hungary is happening here to varying degrees. We can talk about that. But what did you think that – what was the point of publishing it, one, at all, and then two in the post? What did you think would happen? It was clear to me that first, at the end of Trump's first term, his anti-press rhetoric did start to shift into anti-press action, right? You know, there was a number of examples of that.
Over the course of his campaign, he and his supporters became more explicit about their desire to crack down on the free press in the United States. And it was clear to me that there was a playbook that they'd be drawing from if they followed through on those promises. And I thought it was really important to study that playbook first. just to get my own organization ready for what might come, but also to encourage other leaders in media and other journalists.
To get to know that playbook, too, because of the high likelihood that it would be employed here. I think it's essential, you know, when our industry is under pressure, you know, for us to be... Preparing as much as possible and, you know, stealing ourselves for what may come. I have to say, I have never written something that I wished to look.
so off base and hyperbolic. So it has been dispiriting to see how quickly the central concerns have been validated. Yeah, I mean, there's one line here that I really want to underline. Leaders have recognized the crackdown on the press are most effective. when they're at their least dramatic. Not the stuff of thrillers, but a movie so plodding and complicated no one wants to watch it.
So I've been writing this about some of this stuff over the last few months. And there is not a huge audience demand to learn about what's happening at the FCC and how they're interfering with a 60 Minutes interview or how Trump is. suing the Des Moines Register over an inaccurate poll.
But I'm also not surprised that there's not a lot of audience for that period. And then it also seems like the election in a lot of ways is just a referendum on how people consume, whether or not people consume news. Broadly, it seems like people who consume what we would consider news, traditional news. voted for Kamala Harris. Those who didn't voted for Donald Trump. Some gradations there. I think there's a little more nuance than that. Sure, but broadly. Yeah.
And I'm just wondering if we're at the point, and this will be very doomy, where making these kind of arguments is almost kind of beside the point because there's no one in authority who's going to pay attention to. Look, I'm a big believer in the American system. You know, a free press in this country, you know, has not been a partisan ideal. It's not a democratic ideal, right? It's an American ideal.
You know, the founding fathers were a politically and ideologically diverse group of people. And this was one of the few points of true unanimity, right? The centrality of having a press that would arm. this country, this democracy, with the information it needed to lead itself, right? And also provide a central... a check against you know abuse of power against incompetence against corruption self-dealing and
That model has continued to be a bipartisan ideal over the last century, right? So the Supreme Court, it's been one of the – the most regular points of consensus are around. So I remain extremely hopeful about this. I do think our industry needs to, in addition... to preparing for what comes and finding the right way to stand up against abuses that are designed to undermine the press's ability to... report and find information and then bring it to the American public.
I also think that we need to explain ourselves to the public why they should care, right? You know, the press... shouldn't just matter to folks like you and me who are employed by news organizations. The press is asking these questions on behalf of the American public.
It seems like the counter argument to this would be, well, they're not interfering with the free press. No one is marching in a newsroom and seizing people's computers. Generally, that's not happening in the U.S. No one has demanded that the New York Times has to unpublish a story critical of Donald Trump.
What they're doing instead is very often investigating Comcast over DEI. Comcast owns big news operations. Same thing with Disney. It looks like it's going to go on down the line where they're not saying we are deliberately trying to interfere with imaginations of. news organizations. We're just looking at other things that happen to be involved with the parent company. Is that the sort of stuff you're thinking about?
I think there's a mixture of things. First of all... you know, as to the point of the line that you quoted. Right? They're not jailing journalists. No journalists are being killed in the streets, right? They're not shutting down news organizations. They're not kicking people out of the press room, except for the AP. This is a big caveat. They're just allowing more reporters into the program.
Yeah. So it's less dramatic. I mean, that is a big caveat, and I think it's actually a useful example. But it's all around this concept of chilling, right? It is clear that they're trying to create a series of consequences, of negative consequences for asking questions that the administration doesn't want to ask. and for publishing information that the administration doesn't want public. And I think the AP is a good example of this, right?
So on one hand, it can seem sort of technocratic. Just banning, essentially banning the AP from the White House and all sort of official events because they won't call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf. Yeah, and not even banning them from the White House, banning them even more specifically from the press pool, which itself is sort of a complicated body that's hard to explain, right?
At its core, I think this is about something much simpler, and that is whether the president of the United States and the people who work for him... independent news organizations what words they can and cannot use. Right. You know, it is plain that they've been retaliated against. Right. And the administration's been open about that. for using the phrase Gulf of Mexico to describe the body of water that has had that name internationally and domestically for hundreds of years.
So I think, you know, I think when you think about in those terms, should...
Should any – not even this president. Should any president of the United States – and this is why it's so important because it doesn't matter your politics. It doesn't matter which party you may or may not support. Should any president of the United States – have the power to instruct media, what language they can and cannot use to describe things, and then to take retaliatory actions to punish them when they don't use those terms.
You know, if the AP deserves a great deal of credit, they're fighting that in court. But if they had accepted that, they would have been opening the door to an entirely new form of government overreach. Talk about whether the press should engage in some sort of collective action on behalf of the AP or in any of these incidents. How do you think about it as The Times publish? Do you want to see a concerted effort? Would you condone having your staff not attend press conferences?
So it's a great question. Me and many of my peers have reached out to the AP and asked how we can be supportive. I think on principle, there's not a serious news organization that... doesn't have major concerns about this, including some news organizations on the right. I think there is a... A quite powerful quote from the Fox News White House reporter talking about the dangers of allowing a president. take an action like this. In the past, when Fox had been kicked out of the...
Some briefings by the Obama White House. My organization was among the many news organizations that said, we're not going to attend them either. What's trickier in this moment is that the White House is very plainly... trying to remove organizations that are willing to ask the tough questions, the questions that the president doesn't want to answer.
And to replace them with organizations that are less independent, that maybe are more openly supportive of the president and his agenda, so that they won't be challenged, right? And in fact, they'll have their messages sort of... uncritically received and conveyed to those audiences. So the notion that you have this sort of secondary journalistic adjacent ecosystem.
you know, that they're trying to move in, I think is a new dynamic. But is the concern, well, if we walk out of the briefing room, we'll never get back in? I don't know about that. Right. You know, never is a big word that copy editors. I mean, if you were willing to walk out of briefings during Obama administration, why not this time? Without getting into too many sort of private conversations, I think it's important.
To imagine, sorry, I think it's important to not accidentally stumble in to the very reaction that the White House is hoping for, which is... to have a bunch of serious journalists willing to ask tough questions on behalf of the American people, independent journalists, remove themselves. from a position to do that. And you had a lot about that in the op-ed, sort of addressing this question about whether the Times or really any other paper should be sort of...
More actively in opposition to Trump, who's then the candidate now is the president. I disagree with this. I'm quoting you. I disagree with those who suggested that the risk Trump poses the free press. is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection. I think this was a pretty... mainstream conventional wisdom theory of the case up through last fall and post-election. There were a lot of sort of finger wagging from various folks.
Journalism circle saying, hey, we can't we can't steer into resistance, journalism, etc. It seems like that resonated with you. That said, we're now in that era where Trump is actively trying to undermine the press. And there's lots of other stuff, right? You could point to what he's doing with law firms. Do you ever rethink and go? Maybe we should have put our thumb on a scale a little harder and been a little louder about the...
The perils of a Trump administration. And we have a self-interest in this as a press organization that we ought to be louder about. Let me let me let me say a couple of things. First of all, I don't think that that was. you know, the conventional wisdom of the moment. I think there is a real split, and I think there remains a real split in the journalistic community, right, about, you know, sort of a more independent model of journalism and a more outcome model of journalism.
At the New York Times, we believe in the independent model of journalism, right? Like there's this phrase that we've had for over a century without fear or favor, right? Regardless of party sector interests involved. And, you know, and we believe that that's central. You know, to our journalistic mission, right, to our ability to have impact and be trusted. You know, I think it's really important. to be clear on what we mean when we say,
to put our thumb on the scale, right? You know, the model of journalism I'm talking about, right? Independent journalism is about following the facts where they lead. And that doesn't mean you're not going to be called biased, right? We are called biased every single day by Trump supporters. You know, for our insistence on calling out things that Trump and his team have said that aren't true, right? You know, such as...
that the 2020 election was stolen, right? For our willingness to report aggressively and to his... conflicts of interests, his self-dealing, actions he's taking that may be illegal or unconstitutional. I actually think if you look at everything that The New York Times has produced about Trump over the course of three campaigns and now two terms in office.
I think it amounts to the single largest body of investigative and accountability journalism ever produced by a single news organization about a president or a presidential candidate, right? And I don't think there's... a close number two. I mean... So it doesn't mean... You know, my great grandfather had a line, I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out.
Being independent doesn't mean some sort of weird both sides vision where you create false equivalencies so that you can never be accused of bias by one side or the other, right? Sometimes calling it completely straight. will lead folks on one side to say, you know, boy, they have been, you know, awfully hard on my person, right? And another example of that.
is our reporting on Biden's age, right? So Democrats and the Biden administration were relentless in attacking the New York Times, relentless. And they accused us of everything, of having ulterior motives for the coverage, of being swept along by a right-wing conspiracy theory, of... you know, of being armchair doctors in a way that was inappropriate, right? It was a matter of public interest, and it was...
One of the number one issues that voters – it was the number one issues that potential Biden voters were raising as a concern in casting their ballots for Biden. It ended up being a serious enough of a concern that he was pushed out of the race. But they felt that the information, having that information out there was dangerous. And it was dangerous because it could be misused, right? It could be misused to help.
Donald Trump, who they believed represented an existential threat to democracy, right? And so they did something that I think is dangerous in a democracy, which is they decided that they'd be better off with less information, right? that if they just didn't hear it at all... And I think time showed that they needed that information because when they finally got it, when they got it in a way they couldn't ignore, which is Biden's performance in the debate, they decided that they wanted to use it.
And they used it to change candidates. And some say they changed the candidates too late and without a robust process. And had they listened to that information and taken that information more seriously on the front end. that maybe they'd be in a different spot. So why am I saying all that? I believe that we're talking so much in this era about the role of the press in supporting democracy and the role of the press.
play is in supporting democracy is to arm citizens with information that they can use. And I think there's nothing more democratic, right? And that reflects a higher degree of commitment than us saying, voters and citizens should have all the information that we can get. And I think there's nothing less democratic, right? You know, than us saying, you know...
I'm not sure that voters will use this information wisely. So we're going to keep it from them. And quite frankly, if we were to play that role, if other media organizations were to play that role. I think that that would leave the public with really good reason to distrust the press. So that's what I'm trying to say in that line that you asked me about. When someone comes up to you...
wherever and says, I really hate the headline about X or Y, right? Whether it's about Israel may or may not have bombed a hospital in Gaza, or you refer to Trump stating an untruth as opposed to Trump law. They're not really equivalent. But the point is, you hear that stuff all the time, especially on social media. Do you have a satisfying stock answer for that critique of framing or context as opposed to the actual news?
No, I mean, I think if my stock answers were more satisfying, I'd be hearing fewer of the questions. We publish 200 plus stories a day. We publish more words each week than Shakespeare published his entire career. You know, even Shakespeare had a couple of duds with the plays, right? You know?
We are, A, going to get some stuff wrong, right? We have a corrections page for a reason, you know, and we believe the corrections page should be a source of pride for an independent news organization, a serious news organization, because it's a... sign of our commitment to own our mistakes and to learn from them and to not have them happen again. But we'll also have stories where people just disagree on the framing.
You know, what's striking is people often disagree on the framing in different ways, right? So the same headline that to you may feel too soft may to someone else feel too pointed, right? You know, so we're often attacked, you know, and particularly on divisive issues. So issues like, you know, Israel Gaza or abortion or presidential politics. you know, we're often attacked about the same story from opposite sides. So, you know, to the degree to which I have a...
a stock answer on any of this. It's that a great news source, right? The news source that is worthy of your trust. should be challenging you and your beliefs on some regular basis. And if you find yourself just nodding along with your news source, I would recommend expanding your news diet, right? Because the world is just inevitably more complex.
And the information ecosystem right now is designed just to reinforce, you know, your experiences and your assumptions. What news source are you consuming that would surprise people listening to this conversation? Are you a Steve Bannon War Room fan? Oh, I'm less interested in the sort of talk ecosystem you know the pundit ecosystem i i was just about to say but like even even here right you're a reporter you're actually and you're out there still reporting you're
working the phones, you're talking to people, you're going to places, you're trying to understand issues. You are, if you're like any of our reporters, You're waking up in the night, wondering if you missed something, wondering if someone might be misrepresenting something to you.
Thinking about the one more call that can give you confidence. I'm doing a great job. Let's stipulate that I'm doing a great job. So I'm looking in the reporting ecosystem. So I'm less drawn to cable, right? I basically watch no cable. And I'm less drawn to the podcast ecosystem. Beyond that, I read really broadly. The folks I read most closely, After the Times, The Journal, The Post. the FT, the Guardian, the... Atlantic, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, right? So that ecosystem.
You know, and then a bunch of digital media and sub stacks and, you know, newsletters that find their way to me. We'll be right back with A.G. Salzberger. But first, a word from a sponsor. It's been a rough week for your retirement account, your friend who... imports products from China for the TikTok.
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And we're back. I'll make a lurching transition here. Great. A year should go. Lots of the publishers you just mentioned, including Vox Media, were recording this. Axel Springer, which owns Business Insider, who I work for, just to get the disclosures out of the way, signed deals with OpenAI.
to license their stuff, you're suing them instead. You're suing OpenAI and Microsoft. You're not the only... publishers suing an AI company, but that's definitely the most high-profile one, and you suing OpenAI when lots of other people are taking their millions of dollars and said, I think you've spent $11 million last year just prepping this lawsuit. Why are you suing them and why not take the money like everyone else?
So, because it's an active lawsuit, there's going to be some limitations on what I can say here. But look, at the highest level... You know, this is about a core principle. The first thing, let me just say very directly, we're not anti-innovation. We're not anti-AI. We don't think the future can be held at arm's length, right? A big part of my career, my entire career as a leader of this organization has been about embracing innovation.
in service of an enduring mission, right? You know, an enduring journalistic mission. And I think we've been really well served by that. We have already won a Pulitzer Prize in part with thanks to the use of AI-supported investigative reporting. You know, we're using AI to make our products better. Every single story we produce is automatically. Yeah, there was some pronouncement that was treated like a big deal, like you guys were going to use AI in the newsroom, which seemed kind of.
Oh, that was not a big deal. I was surprised that was a new story. Yeah, no, but we're using it to, you know, translate everything into audio, right? And, you know, if you're a... visually impaired person, or if you're just a multitasker, that's a great service. It's easy to imagine a world in which AI can translate.
everything we produce simultaneously into every language on earth right so we're not anti-tech in any way um But being pro-innovation shouldn't mean... that we also have to believe that any company can come and take everything we've ever produced without permission, without compensation. And use it to create competitive products and experiences, right? And there's a legal principle behind that belief, right? Which is intellectual property. that really matters, right? It is not legal.
someone's done napster found that out right um you know when they you know you know did a similar thing and decided to take every song ever made and every album ever made and decided that they would take that without permission and without compensation and create a product, a competitive product.
And, you know, and we're saying that that's not okay. But Napster didn't survive that legal challenge, right? But the destruction of the music industry continued, right? People continued to take music for free. even though the music industry eventually found a new system that allowed them to do streaming. I'm just going to push back on you pretty hard on that one. The music ecosystem... you know, was in free fall until the Napster ruling. And then it steadily built itself back up and is now...
significantly larger than it was pre-Napster. I mean, it stayed pretty fallen for a long time. It took the industry a long time to figure out a new model. Oh, for sure. For sure. Look, innovation is always going to be disruptive, right? And there's plenty of people who would say... that Spotify and iTunes, right? Like that the monetary split isn't good enough, right? So it's not to say that the current ecosystem is perfect.
But it's certainly a healthier ecosystem in which those intellectual property rights are recognized. So when I talk to the publishers who are doing these deals – They all know this business history. They've seen it before. And their conclusion is this is coming whether we like it or not. We can get some terms and some money if we sign up. Otherwise, we get nothing and this change happens to us regardless.
Why is that not a risk for the time? Why did you decide that you're better off suing than dealing? I mean, a lot of those folks are also privately cheering on and some of them publicly cheering on. They like what you're doing. They just think that it's not going to work.
two things that are probably different about us. I would call them advantages. One, we're on stronger financial footing now. And two, we just take a longer view. And, you know, we are... willing to spend money to protect an enduring right that matters and not just for the times it matters for our whole ecosystem it matters and not even just
For other journalism organizations, it matters for musicians and actors and, you know, screenwriters and, you know, artists and researchers and, you know, novelists. And I think if you take the long view, you recognize that it's important to stand up for this one because otherwise, you know... anything to ensure that those payments can or will continue. separate but connected to the lawsuit.
It seems like we're headed towards a shift and certainly lots of big companies like Google think the shift is happening where instead of going to a Google or someplace and looking for an answer and being sent to the Times or Vox or any other site. You just get the answer spit out there. You have no reason to visit those sites. The referral traffic goes down.
It seems like that reality is coming one way or another. I've heard you. Well, I haven't heard you. I've heard that you are talking to people in the newsroom about this, saying this is a big challenge for us. regardless. What's the plan to deal with what seems to be a real shift in the way people consume information?
I mean, so I'll say two things that will sound contradictory. They're not. It's just, you know, I think a big part of the job of a journalism leader in this era is to hold sometimes conflicting thoughts in their head simultaneously. disproportionate control over the flow of attention. you know, on the internet and in the digital era. And when I say the platforms, I mean, it's a handful of companies really control how people spend their time and how they find things.
in digital environments. That is a reality. That's Google, Meta, Amazon. Exactly. Maybe Twitter. Yeah, maybe TikTok. You want to add to that list. But even if you just... take the shortest possible list, you know, you'll still end up with a majority even if you just pick two or three places. And we're going to need to figure out how to navigate that environment, right? You know, future readers of the Times. you know, are not going to have their first interaction with the times.
Or typing, you know, www.nytimes.com, you know, and this is the standard response for all publishers. Well, we're going to people will come to us first because of our authority and they know that they're getting it through us. They're going to come to the source. And in most cases, I don't think it's going to work at all. It's plausible for the times. Every future reader, you're going to meet for the first time somewhere else. And so you just have to be out in those environments.
At the same time, our strategy has been extremely explicit, you know, since I think 2014 or 2015 that we... That we have been trying to build a destination. And to build a destination, you have to build direct relationships. And we've seen for a long time how dangerous it is to be overexposed. to the algorithmic whims of the platforms. And the answer to that is to build those direct relationships.
There's many ways that we've been doing that, right? Like, you know, I think the daily is an example of going off platform to introduce ourselves, right? And start to build a habit in your life. allows people to say, oh, this is different. This is different than other news sources in a way that I appreciate and value. The morning, right? So we have the most listened to news podcast and we have the most read newsletter.
Those are examples of us going elsewhere to then build relationships that are destination-based. There's a lot of vertical video on the homepage right now. Is that because you want to make that stuff and then put it on platforms like TikTok and then bring people back to the Times? Or do you think people who are going to NYT.com want to see video? It's more the latter than the former, but it's both, right? Again, holding those two contradictory thoughts, right?
You know, I think TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, right? Like all these places have introduced a new language for communicating information. really interesting and has value and you know we're unapologetic about wanting to learn from all that um the highest value we see is it's a different way for people to engage with our product, right? You know, and with our journalism. So it's a little bit more lean back. It's a little bit more sort of grabbing a short moment. It's also showcasing...
of our reporters, right? Like putting a human face to the work we do. This is something you guys have talked about for a while. This is not just a random person. This is a person with authority. Here's what they look like. Here's why they know what they know. And exactly. They're going to explain how they got the information that they're talking about. And in a low trust environment, I think that type of work, that type of explanation becomes more important. And at the same time...
This is a forum that feels more native on a place like TikTok or on a place like YouTube. YouTube actually rewards a little bit more long-form stuff. So you see us putting the Ezra Klein show there, the Daily there. You know, if that's how we meet, you know, the next generation of future Times loyalists, that's great. When you put video, I mean, the Times has a conservative lowercase c audience. It tends to.
Do they flip out when they see video on their homepage and that's not what they want? Or do they sort of accept that this is 2025 and sometimes there's video? You know, I don't buy the conservative audience. Like, honestly, I don't buy that we have any type of audience anymore. You know, I think sometimes when people are describing what they think our audience is. Well, you kind of know who a New York Times subscriber is, right? You had kind of a pretty good sense of the demographics for that.
Yeah, pretty good sense. But what I'm saying is, so I think when people are saying a phrase like that, they're actually thinking the times of 160 years or 165 years. But over the last 10 years, we've become... the second or third most read news source in the country. We have the most listened to news podcast, most read newsletter. We went from 1 million to 11 million subscribers. you know we now have you know you know the old stereotype right was
You know, as your, you know, your, your, you know, uncle who's a lawyer professor on the Upper West Side was the time subscriber. Well, we now have more subscribers in California. And Texas is next on the list after New York and then Florida, right? So... Our audience is getting significantly more diverse, age diverse, racially diverse, politically diverse, certainly geographically diverse. Our fastest growing regions right now are actually the South and the Midwest for subscriber growth.
So we haven't had any pushback on this stuff. You know, I remember in that sort of older era when we tried to eliminate the bridge column. And Dean Baquet, who published more hard-hitting, controversial journalism than probably any leader in our history, said it was the single...
most pushback he had ever gotten to any decision of any type was eliminating the bridge column. We're past that. Our audience really values the fact that this is a place that is... really committed to maintaining our standards for excellence and independence. and our first order commitment to quality journalism, but changing just about everything else about how we deliver it. That 11 million subscriber number. I mean, I remember when you guys moved to subscriptions.
I could tell the leadership of the paper on down was not sure it was going to work, right? The idea that you'd have 11 million subscribers basically a decade later. So you have that number. It's super impressive. I was talking to one of your employees. He said, we have 11. We've never had more subscribers.
and we've never been less relevant. And their argument was sort of twofold. One was, you know, you have the Trump administration literally sort of pushing you guys out and replacing you with, you know, trying to replace you with, like we talked about at the beginning.
pliant coverage. And two, I think more broadly, there is this world where people might be seeing a New York Times video on their TikTok, but they could also just be seeing a slew of other random stuff, some of which was news, some of which was random stuff. And it's just a... cacophony of news, cacophony of stuff. And so within that, the Times is no longer as prominent as it used to be. Does that argument make sense?
I know you're going to disagree, but do you understand the argument? Oh, I certainly understand the argument. And to be clear, a version of this argument emerges. you know, every time there's some sort of significant, you know, sort of change in society and how it gets the news, right? Like I bet the first...
you know, memo you can find about how newspapers like the New York Times are no longer relevant or was probably written in the 1920s around the rise of radio. And you can only imagine what the memos looked like as TV was rising. And then we all know what the memos looked like. In the 90s. In the 90s as the internet was rising, right? And, you know, and, you know, times was being derided as a dinosaur. Right. You know, destined for extinction. You know, once again, last year we had.
One of the largest audiences of any news source, I think it was us, CNN, and Fox, were the three largest overall audiences. NBC may have been there as well, despite the fact that we are a paid news product. And we had by far the highest engagement per visitor of any news source. And you combine that to... There are more people spending more time with the New York Times than any time in our history. I mean, it's just – and it's not even close, right? And –
And you have a sense of how relevant we are, right? So even the folks who criticize us. Trump has been relentless in his criticism, but when the plan went down over the Potomac... If you look at his press release, the first thing he does, the first sentence of it quotes our investigation, our major investigation we had done a year earlier on air traffic safety. And the various lapses that we had revealed in many ways, you know, sort of predicted some of the...
You know, the tragic outcome. President Biden was a fierce critic of The New York Times. But when we spent six years on the ground in some of the most dangerous places on Earth to look at the true. toll of drone warfare programs run by the United States on civilians across the Middle East. we prompted not only admissions of wrongdoing by the Pentagon,
But we prompted significant reform on how war was waged in this country, right? So, you know, people are always wringing their hands on this stuff, but I think our track record speaks for itself. When I was talking to folks in advance of this interview and said, I'm going to talk to your publisher, what are you interested in hearing? I was surprised. And can I say one other thing on that just because? That's not to say that we haven't seen this massive growth in this other type of ecosystem.
Right. So really the talk ecosystem. This is the Joe Rogans. And people taking advantage of that. Right. I mean, Joe Biden didn't give you guys a sit down interview. You made a big fuss about that. No one even considered that Trump would do that. And he's going through the Theo Vons and Joe Rogans of the world he wants to communicate.
Well, Trump, oddly, is much more accessible to the press. And I'd be surprised, actually, if he doesn't give us a sit-down interview. You know, he's a longtime reader and appreciator of the Times. He's a print guy. Access should not be seen as a sign of the importance of the work that's done. We also have very little access in Russia or China. We have to be able to continue to report. fully and independently in the absence of access.
It is true that there is an influential cohort of people, right, including both of these presidents. who have found that they have found some not inconsiderable advantage. to going in front of like-minded talk people, right? Either on TV or in the podcast ecosystem who... Won't challenge them the way an independent reporter from, say, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal would. Biden also didn't sit down with either of those news organizations for an interview. At the end of the day.
All those folks also... depend on the work that institutions like the Post and the Journal and the Times and the AP and Reuters and Bloomberg are doing. Because You know, we're the ones that are unearthing facts. We're on the ground reporting the next story that they can all argue about, that they can spin, that they can try to contextualize. Without the work that you and other mainstream media are doing, there's nothing to talk about on a podcast.
That's right. We'll be right back with A.G. Salzberger. But first, a word from a sponsor. I did want to ask you about the opinion section. When I talked to folks who work at The Times and said, I'm talking to the publisher, what do you want to hear them talk about? What's going on with the opinion section? Which surprised me the first few times I heard that response, but it was pretty consistent.
First of all, can you explain what your relationship is to the opinion section of the paper and how it's different than the news section? Yeah. So at The Times, we have sort of two walls. that are meant to preserve the independence of our news report. So the first wall is between news and business. So that means that unlike most organizations – The executive editor does not report to the CEO. And that is very intentional so that...
The executive editor has the independence to do things. And this happens at a pretty regular cadence that may not be in the best commercial interests of the place. Right. So, for example. writing a tough investigative piece on one of our most reliable advertisers, right? We had an example a handful of years ago where... We wrote a piece that got us kicked out of China after a major investment to create a new Chinese language news product, right?
We had this incredible investigative report that showed corruption self-dealing at the highest levels of government in China. Something that every news organization deals with, that tension between edit and dollars. In the real world, there's usually some sort of give and take. But you think you can have a firm enough wall that your editorials, the people creating news for you don't have to worry about that. That's right.
If you're thinking year to year, there might be some advantage to overlooking what's in the best interest of the reader. But if you're thinking decade to decade and generation to generation, there never is. Trust is the most important asset that we have. The second wall is between news and opinion. So our opinion team is run by Katie Kingsbury. Our newsroom is run by Joe Kahn. Both of them report into me separately. So your question was,
What's my relationship there? Yeah, because the takeaway I was getting from, and these were reporters generally I was talking to, was... They weren't really that curious about how you felt about what was happening in the newsroom. I seem to sort of take for granted that you liked it. That I'm not taking it seriously? No, no. There was no question about how you felt about it.
But they seem to feel that you were actively involved in reshaping, changing, redirecting the opinion page in some direction. I don't think that that's quite – I don't think that either characterization is quite fair. You know, I've been – as involved in anyone, as anyone in the transformation of the times, you know, from a very print-centric...
I believe my role is not to be involved in day-to-day coverage in the newsroom. I think that's part of our model of independence. But I continue to be involved in questions of standards. high-stakes editorial decisions, such as... By the way, you're the owner. Or you're representing the ownership of the paper. I mean that seems pretty reasonable. Yeah. So if I had a lawyer here, they'd point out that we control –
We're the controlling shareholder, not the owner. But that's actually not the spirit. The spirit is that everyone needs a boss, right? And, you know, in fact, the Ach Solzberger family... you know that has controlled the times for over a century you know actually has a well-documented record of non-interference with editorial. I've never had a single member of the family push me in any direction on coverage, which is a remarkable thing.
It's what makes us different, I think, than a lot of other ownership structures out there or control structures. So it tends to be I'm involved at the level of sort of strategy. you know, on major decisions. Is it safe to send someone into Russia right now, right? We're about to publish, you know, former President Trump's taxes. Are we ready, you know, for potential fallout from that? So decisions like that. But Joe runs the newsroom with a lot of autonomy.
And Katie runs the opinion section with a lot of the perception that you are more involved in opinion than you are in news is not correct. I mean, at a day-to-day level, I'm not involved in the coverage of either. At a strategic level, I am certainly involved in both, and it's possible that we're more... We're in a period of more strategic change in opinion. But really, like Katie has my full confidence. She's an excellent editor. And her deputy, Patrick Healy, is an excellent editor.
I'm seeing as a reader opening the paper the next morning. And I kind of thought, oh, this seems kind of picky about who's running the op-ed section. Most people won't care. And the feedback I got from that was, The op-ed broadly is some of the most popular stuff in The Times. And that's why it is so meaningful. It's what people think of as The Times very often. Yeah, look, I bet people are more interested in opinion right now. So, I mean, look.
We believe that first and foremost, we are a reporting organization. I would say we're the country's most important reporting organization right now because of the amount of resources we put into it. So just to like put that in. into some numbers. We had over 50 people. on the ground in Ukraine this last year. Ukraine certainly wasn't trending or winning any algorithmic attention, right?
And we had 50 people there because it was still important and the world needed to know what was happening there. You know, we've added— We used to say that 10 years ago, when, you know, what's going to happen to the Times question was— The Baghdad Bureau was the analog then. Or covering Sudan, right? Like we've had a number of reporters going at great – No one is subscribing to The Times so they can read your Sudan.
They expect it. They might expect it. But you're not generating clicks. You're probably not selling subscriptions because of your Sudoku. Yeah. I think the easy metrics don't show that that's going to be the winning thing. To sum up. You were involved in managing opinion section not more than anything else. This is not a great way to end a podcast.
I have this question for you. I wish I could give you more conspiracy theories to work with. So let's go back here. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. Since you published that op-ed we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, he has dramatically changed the way at least that op-ed section works. Do you think that piece you wrote warning people about Trump's approach to press freedom would run in the Washington Post of 2025?
I have no reason to believe it wouldn't. I obviously haven't tried. What do you think of what he's done of that paper? Yeah. Look, as you can imagine, I'm asked that a lot. You know, you can never know everything from the outside. But here's what I do know. The country needs a strong Washington Post. It really does. You know, journalism jobs in this country have been declining faster than coal miners. And the Post has been one of the places that is...
defied gravity there. And our industry needs a strong Washington Post. I think they make the rest of us better. They continue to have an amazing depth of talent. And so I'm rooting for them. I know it's been a challenging... And, you know, I've presided over challenging stretches, too.
But people counted them out a few years ago before Bezos stepped in. And then they had one of the greatest runs in the history of the organization. So I am – You know, I remain really hopeful and I remain a subscriber.
It's weird to end an interview with the New York Times publisher talking about the Washington Post. Do you want to talk about the weather or something? Get us out of here. Well, I mean, look, if you're looking for another note to end on, are... industry right now is buffeted by a series of challenges that, um, Our copy desk at the New York Times is careful about words like existential, which are so easy to throw around, but often harder to back up.
But I think that our industry, our profession, remains under existential threat in terms of the business challenge. I think the challenge of serving an increasingly polarized and tribalized public. the challenge to press freedom in this country, right? The first topic that we touched on. And on top of all that, we've got perhaps the next great technological shift that our industry will need to keep pace with, right, with the arrival of AI.
And you look at that, and this is a period of just tremendous pressure on news organizations in this country. And the thing that I'd say that we need to do through all this is to narrate why this isn't just a problem for journalists, but why it's a problem for... citizens, for society, for democracy, and to remind people that we are the flow. We are responsible for the flow.
of reliable information, you know, or a disproportionate amount of the flow, certainly, right? I think the press is uniquely suited to combat some of the underlying problems that sort of connect all the existential problems of this moment in the world, right? So, like, we all know the problems, right? It's a democratic erosion and climate change and, you know... You know, inequality and all sorts of other things. You know, just the pace of technological change.
But underneath that, I think society is really struggling with misinformation. with polarization, and with impunity, right? With this notion of, you know, this group that is just sort of floated away and is accountable to no one. And... Those are exactly the challenges that the press was basically designed to take on. Right. You know, it's like, what's the answer to misinformation? a reliable, trustworthy source of truth.
What is the challenge to polarization? It's actually understanding. It's reporters on the ground helping expose the experiences and hopes and fears of people who are not like you. And what is the challenge to impunity? It's accountability journalism. And so if there's one thing I'd leave you or your listeners with, it's just... You know, the press is an essential ingredient in all this, and I think...
more vulnerable than ever, but also more needed than ever. And that is how you end a podcast interview, H.E. Salzberger. You have your hands full. Thank you for taking time. All right. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thanks again to AG Salzberger. Been looking forward to that one for a long time.
Thanks to Jelani Carter, who produces and edits the show. Thanks to our advertisers, who bring it to you for free. Zero dollars in this economy. But thanks to you guys for listening, reading, writing, sharing, all the good stuff. See you next week.