Jacob Weisberg
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digital media until just before the era
o Brexit and Trump, and he has
produced a memoir that recounts the
changes he experienced in personal,
anecdotal terms. Abramson, by contrast,
has written a heavily reported, journal-
istic narrative about a transformational
period in media that happened to include
her tenure as executive editor o The
New York Times, which lasted from 2011
until her unceremonious ¿ring in 2014.
Rusbridger took the helm at The
Guardian in 1995 and committed himsel
to embracing the Internet, even when
it was less than clear what that would
mean. Rather than focusing on the
potential disruption to his business, he
saw a journalistic opportunity. The
Guardian, originally based in Manches-
ter and barely in the top ten o British
newspapers in terms o circulation,
could now reach a global audience.
Because it was eectively a nonpro¿t
organization endowed by the deep-
pocketed Scott Trust, it could invest
heavily in audience growth and public-
service journalism. This gave Rus-
bridger license to launch reportorial
crusades on issues as varied as climate
change and corporate tax dodgers.
Not everyone in the British press
had such a high-minded conception o
their mission, and for decades, British
news organizations had maintained
something akin to a code o omerta
around unethical reporting techniques.
In 2009, The Guardian exposed the
practice, common at newspapers pub-
lished by Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corporation, o hacking the voicemails
o unsuspecting people and harvesting
their contents for publication. By
revealing it, Rusbridger eectively
tendered his resignation from the Fleetand exercising undue inÇuence. Those
who produced the nightly news that
Americans relied on, Agnew charged in
a speech in 1969, were “a tiny, enclosed
fraternity o privileged men elected by
no one” who “bask in their own provin-
cialism, their own parochialism.”
EDITS AND ETHICS
In retrospect, the 1980s and 1990s were
a kind o fool’s paradise for American
journalism. As the elite press corps
became more professionalized, some
critics wondered whether reporters were
growing too prosperous and comfort-
able. By the early years o this century,
however, the job o leading a major
newsroom was becoming obviously more
dicult. It no longer just meant stand-
ing up to angry ocials from time to
time—now, all politicians were perpetu-
ally unhappy with their coverage. Run-
ning a media organization had devolved
into a constant struggle on all fronts: to
reinvent a failing business model and
husband shrinking resources while mol-
lifying an insecure sta in an atmosphere
o intense public scrutiny. The old defer-
ence and respect gave way to second-
guessing o every decision. At the same
time, the rise o digital and social media
meant that leading news organization no
longer had the same gatekeeping power.
There were no longer any gates.
Two former newspaper editors, Alan
Rusbridger and Jill Abramson, have
written accounts o what it was like to
run an important newspaper in this
period o rising pressure and diminishing
control. Their approaches accord with
the predominant journalistic styles o
their two countries. Rusbridger served as
editor o the British newspaper The
Guardian from just before the dawn o