What Just Happened at the New York Times?
TALKING POLITICS
Catherine Carr
4.7 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2020
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In an extra episode, we're back with last week's guest Jonathan Shainin, Head of Opinion at the Guardian, so he can talk us through the big blow-up at the NYT. What has it taught us about about the new battlegrounds in newspaper opinion? Where does power now lie in newspaper offices? And where does Jonathan draw the line between what can and can't be published? In our next episode, voices on the ground in the US.
Further Reading:
The Tom Cotton Op-Ed from the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html
Michelle Goldberg in the NYT
Tom Cotton Op-Ed under review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/business/new-york-times-op-ed-cotton.html
The creation of the NYT "op-ed" page, which was launched in 1970
The history of the "objectivity norm" in American journalism
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, my name is David Ronserman and this is Talking Politics. Last week we spoke to Jonathan |
| 0:13.4 | Shaynann who is head of opinion at the Guardian about facts and opinion in the current polarised |
| 0:19.7 | age. And since then, at the New York Times, that question has blown up and it's almost |
| 0:25.8 | blown up that newspaper. So, Jonathan's back to help us understand what's going on. |
| 0:33.0 | Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, |
| 0:37.1 | Europe's leading magazine of culture and ideas. Improve the quality of your solitude |
| 0:43.2 | with a subscription to the LRB. They'll send you exceptional analysis of the politics, |
| 0:49.2 | economics, sociology and science behind the crisis and reportage from around the world. |
| 0:56.1 | But also, gloriously unrelated, richly immersive distraction from the world's best authors |
| 1:02.0 | and critics, writing about history and philosophy, art and technology, fiction and poetry. |
| 1:08.4 | Just go to lrb.me-slash-talk and get your first 12 issues for just 12 pounds. That's lrb.me-slash-talk. |
| 1:19.4 | Hi Jonathan. Hi David. I think we should try and sketch out what it is we're talking about for |
| 1:29.8 | people who maybe aren't quite as inside this story as we are. I think we should say up front, |
| 1:34.4 | this isn't really a declaration of interest on your part, but you do hold at the Guardian, |
| 1:39.0 | which is in some ways assist a newspaper of New York Times. The role that was held by James |
| 1:45.6 | Bennett, who has just resigned at the New York Times, is it fair to say that? I would say that |
| 1:51.9 | within the Guardian, yes, that there are big differences which will come to in a moment |
| 1:58.2 | between the way that the New York Times is structured, managerially or kind of editorialally. |
| 2:06.7 | The other difference worth noting, I suppose, is that my job does not encompass management of |
| 2:13.2 | the editorial board, which writes the leaders, and that is part of Bennett's job. But what seems |
| 2:18.5 | significant, and maybe I should just say it now, is that in the New York Times, there has been always |
| 2:24.7 | a very overt separation between the news side of the paper and the opinion side of the paper. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Catherine Carr, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Catherine Carr and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.