2019-10-21_Time

70 Time October 21–28, 2019

there’s an evident boredom with questions of policy, then a plea

delivered in honeyed tones: “But I came from Jamaica, Queens,

Jamaica Estates, and I became President of the United States.

I’m sort of entitled to a great story from my—just one—from

my newspaper. I mean, you know.”

TRUmP TRiUmPHS is a pretty great story. It covered two-

thirds of the Times front page the morning after an election re-

sult that three years later still draws attention from other vital

matters, including the signal accomplishment of the slender,

bald young man seated on the other side of the Resolute desk.

The American landscape is littered with the husks of news out-

lets desiccated by the migration of life-

giving attention from a page that folds

to a page that glows. Worse, people tell

pollsters they don’t even believe most of

what they read on their news feeds. Yet in

this forbidding new world the country’s

stuffiest, most remote and self- important

newspaper somehow became a relatable,

nimble and savvy digital vehicle for what

on many days is the best journalism in the world.

Trump calls it “the failing New York Times,” but its stock

sells for three times what it did a decade ago. Its 4.7 million

paying subscribers is more than three times its print peak and

growing so steadily that the company’s stated goal of 10 mil-

lion by 2025 does not seem out of reach. The Times today pro-

duces not only a profit but also a certain hope. Some “legacy”

news outlets—the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times,

indeed, the very magazine you’re reading—were buoyed by

Business

On a SUnday mORning in THe SUmmeR Of 2018, aRTHUR
Gregg Sulzberger, a member of the fifth generation of the
family that controls the New York Times, was changing
the diaper of a member of the sixth, when the phone rang.
Another mess: A few days earlier President Trump had in-
vited Sulzberger, in his capacity as Times publisher, to a pri-
vate meeting at the White House. Now a Trump tweet had
not only made the meeting public but also asserted it had
produced an unlikely meeting of minds: “Spent much time
talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by
the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase,
‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!”
What happened next amounts to the
news as we’ve known it for decades. The
Times put out a version of events contra-
dicting the President’s. The White House
doubled down. And the public took sides.
But six months later, after accepting an-
other White House invitation (this time
on the record), Sulzberger sat down at a
microphone and talked to someone else: the people who down-
load The Daily, which is among the most popular podcasts in
America and is produced by the New York Times. Listening is as
different from reading as the Times of 10 years ago is from the
news organization today, and it’s all there in “The President and
the Publisher,” the Feb. 1 episode devoted to the meeting. From
Sulzberger, you hear not only about the diaper, but also about
waiting in the cold on Pennsylvania Avenue because the Secret
Service didn’t know the publisher was coming. From Trump,

O

Stock in ‘the failing

New York Times’

runs three times its

price a decade ago

PRE

VIO

US

(^) PA
GES
: (^) R
ED
UX;
(^) AB
OV
E:
TO
M (^) B
REN
NE
R—
THE
(^) NE
W (^) Y
OR
K (^) T
IM
ES/
RE
DU
X;
RIG
HT:
(^) GE
TTY
(^) IM
AG
ES
(^) ( 3
); (^) T
HE
NE
W (^) Y
OR
K (^) T
IME
S/R
ED
UX
( (^2) )