Episode Details

Carolyn Ryan — deputy managing editor of The New York Times — joins the Chuck Toddcast for a candid conversation about the state of American journalism at a moment when the Times has become, as Ryan puts it, one of the last big independent organizations left in news. Ryan makes the case that serious journalism has become almost impossible without the resources the Times can still muster — deep-dive reporting requires enormous time, the best legal team in the business to withstand the threats and lawsuits now routinely aimed at the press, and an ownership structure insulated from market pressure. She's blunt about the difference the Ochs-Sulzberger family makes: newsrooms owned by publicly traded companies inevitably change their behavior to satisfy shareholders, while the family that controls the Times is, in her words, "ride or die" for journalism — a distinction that has never mattered more than it does now, even as she praises the excellent nonprofit newsrooms springing up around the country. Ryan explains how the Times is building regional reporting hubs and investing heavily in places like Texas on the theory that a truly national news organization needs a journalist in every state, why book reporting from stars like Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan often lands with more impact and candor than day-to-day breaking news, and how the paper decides which reporters get the coveted book leave that produces those deeper stories.

The conversation gets into the harder editorial questions facing the Times in the Trump era. Ryan discusses the paper's major investment in a more rigorous polling and data operation , its aggressive push into video to reach younger audiences, and the perennial tension over whether there should be a brighter line between the newsroom and the opinion page — a separation the Times has tried to clarify through design changes and by being more transparent about its process. Ryan is thoughtful about one of the thorniest challenges in modern journalism: how to handle the obvious lies told by Trump and other political figures, explaining that to actually call something a "lie" you have to establish intent, that the audience cares enormously about how things are described, and that the language should always be direct and forthright without tipping into hysteria. She closes with a sharp critique of the Pentagon kicking out reporters and banning contact with unauthorized military members — a policy she argues is not only unconstitutional but a direct threat to the journalism that keeps the public informed about how its military actually operates.

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