One of the most coveted seats in American journalism already has a new occupant. Joe Kahn will replace Dean Baquet as director of New York Times when he ends his eight years at the head of the New York information institution in June, according to what the newspaper itself reported on Tuesday. The bet is not a surprise, and it seems safe: Kahn, a man of the house, has worked as a correspondent in China, has a Pulitzer Prize, has led the International section, worked on the successful digitization of the newspaper, an example for newsrooms from all over the world, and since 2016 he has been working as number two of the rotary.
In his appointment, the work of Kahn, 57, in the conversion of the venerable Gray Lady, the name by which the Times in the American media universe with a mixture of envy and reverence, from a print newspaper (whose slogan prided itself on giving “All The News That’s Fit To Print,” that “All The News That’s Fit To Print”) to an ocean liner digital, which this year will be 171 years old and employs a record number of 1,700 journalists. Kahn has worked to redirect editorial efforts from the paper edition to the web edition. The business statement also attributes to him the commitment to breaking news and visual journalism, for increasing the weight of videos and podcastas well as having supervised the international expansion to conquer Asian and European markets.
“For many, especially those who have worked alongside Joe – a brilliant journalist and a brave and principled boss – this announcement will come as no surprise; he brings impeccable news judgment, a sophisticated understanding of the forces that dominate the world, and a long history of helping the journalists in his charge so that his work shines as more ambitious and courageous, ”wrote the editor of New York Times, AG Sulzberger, to its staff in an internal statement on Tuesday afternoon. “Dean told me recently that he was convinced that Joe was the most capable editor he knew to take on a global newsroom. [como la de The New York Times], which has grown in size, complexity and ambition”, added the text.
“We don’t know where the political current will take us over time,” Kahn explains in reference to the growing polarization in which the United States is plunged, in the interview that accompanies the news of his appointment. “Instead of pursuing that, we want to commit and recommit to being independent.”
Baquet leaves the first line of New York Times at 65 years old. When it arrived in 2014, the header had 966,000 digital subscribers. Today it is close to 10 million, according to the calculations of the newspaper itself. It is not yet known what he will do next, although, according to what Sulzberger has communicated to his employees, he will continue to be associated with the New York newspaper, “in an innovative adventure.”
The era of Donald Trump, during which the header he redoubled his efforts to monitor the president, and the pandemic, which forced the media around the world to reinvent itself, have marked the eight years at the helm of the first black director in the history of the newspaper. Among his achievements are the investigations into film producer Harvey Weinstein in the case that lit the Me Too fuse, and those that ended the career of Fox News presenter Bill O’Reilly, who was accused of sexual harassment.
Some resounding blunders will also be remembered from that time, such as the discredit that the podcast brought caliphatewhose fanciful depiction of life under ISIS terror caused a scandal, or the firing of a reporter after it was discovered that he had used “a racist slur” during a field trip with high school students organized by the newspaper.
Baquet, who had already been the director of another great benchmark, Los Angeles Times —albeit for a very brief space of time; she left after a year and a half, for refusing to make personnel cuts—, she accepted the assignment after the abrupt resignation of Jill Abramson, the first woman to hold the position. In the Baquet era, the Times He has won 18 Pulitzer Prizes and has managed to put himself at the forefront of almost all the innovative manifestations of contemporary journalism: from the newsletters to the podcastfrom crossword puzzles and cooking recipes to data analysis and the production of documentaries, a field in which he won his first Oscar this year with the documentary short film The Queen of Basketball about pioneering American basketball player Lucy Harris.
The son of a successful Boston businessman who founded the popular office supply firm, Staples, Kahn worked early in his career in Texas as part of the writing of The Dallas Morning News, newspaper for which he began collaborating from Beijing, where he arrived in 1989, just in time to witness the Chinese authorities’ repression of the Tiananmen Square protests. In the capital and in Shanghai he also worked for The Wall Street Journal Y TheTimes. In 2006 he won a pulitzer, shared with a correspondent of the newspaper that he is now preparing to direct, for an investigation into the legal system of the Asian giant. He returned to New York in 2008 to work at the international desk of The New York Times. Eight years later, he was promoted to deputy director.
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