New Top Editor at the New York Times Sees Growth Beyond the Coasts

(Bloomberg) -- Joe Kahn had just been named executive editor of the New York Times and already he’d become tabloid fodder. 

A photoshoot for New York magazine published Tuesday featured Kahn sprawled on the floor in a suggestive pose. After people poked fun at him on Twitter, a New York Post headline on Wednesday read: “NY Times’ new boss mocked over this sexy ‘French Girls’ photo spread.” 

“One of the things I’ve learned is that you should say ‘no’ to certain things that a photographer asked you to do to enhance the shot,” Kahn said in an interview Thursday. 

Such is the new reality for Kahn, 57, who was appointed on April 19 to perhaps the most powerful -- and most heavily scrutinized -- job in American media. Kahn, who has been the paper’s managing editor since 2016, will replace Dean Baquet, 65, who led the newsroom since 2014. 

With Kahn, the paper has an experienced newsman who shared two Pulitzer Prizes for reporting in China. A former foreign editor, Kahn said he’ll look to boost international readership as well as that in the middle of the U.S., moving journalists “as much as possible away from the coastal bases of coverage.”

Kahn takes over a newsroom that’s on stronger financial footing than when Baquet was appointed eight years ago. The Times has over 1,750 journalists and it’s become an industry model for attracting digital customers. The paper ended last year with 7.6 million total subscribers. It’s now set a new goal of attracting 15 million by the end of 2027, even with growth slowing since the Trump presidency drove a surge in readers. 

An article in Recode this month said Times business executives are concerned about a lack of diversity in a subscriber base that is “older, richer, whiter, and more liberal than the rest of America.”

Kahn said he was “aware, broadly speaking, that consumers of really high-quality news and information tend to be older and less diverse than the American population at large.” But he said that the demographics of the Times’ digital subscribers, including its podcast audience, are younger and more diverse than its print readership.

“I’m not really that worried about it,” he said. “The main way we improve our readership is to fire on all cylinders in terms of our journalistic mission.” 

He sees continued opportunity to convert casual readers into paid subscribers, using the internet as a tool to reel them in. “They might start with engagement on Facebook, they might start with a Google search,” Kahn said. “What we need to do is convert those readers into more digital news customers, and we’re doing it.”

A Harvard University graduate, Kahn is the son of a co-founder of the Staples office supply chain. In addition to reading the Times in print and online, Kahn says he tries to listen to every episode of “The Daily,” the Times’ hit podcast. He’s also a regular player of Wordle, the popular daily word phenomenon that the Times bought in January. 

“I’m a little competitive on it, mostly with my wife and kids,” he said. 

He said he “strongly endorsed” a recent memo from Baquet urging reporters to reduce their time on Twitter. Kahn said he encourages his reporters to engage with readers comments on the Times’ site, which he said are “super high quality.” 

One of Kahn’s big challenges will be changing the culture of the Times newsroom. Last year, an internal report found the paper is often a difficult place to work for Black and Latino employees. 

Kahn said he plans to “evolve the culture of the place” to make sure that employees from different racial backgrounds want to stay there long-term. 

“I think there are numerous times when we fell short in that way,” he said.

Kahn will also need to appease star reporters who have a wide range of other opportunities, like writing books and appearing on cable news and podcasts. Substack Inc., a startup that helps writers publish email newsletters, has tried to poach Times’ journalists by offering them large advances. 

“There are fads that come along every now and again, like everyone’s going to run off and start their own podcast on Spotify or everyone’s going to rush off to Substack and become an instant newsletter millionaire,” Kahn said. “We look at those things and make sure whenever possible that we’re retaining our best people.”

A potential tension in the newsroom emerged just days after he was named the next executive editor. On Thursday, the union representing Times staffers tweeted that the publisher was “pressuring us to return to the office in June” and the paper’s management needed to get the guild’s approval. 

Kahn said that the Times would be “flexible” with its return to office policy, particularly with employees taking care of immunocompromised people or those with young unvaccinated kids. But he said it was important for staffers to return to the newsroom a few days a week.

“You get a lot of value out of developing relationships with your fellow journalists,” Kahn said. “You pick up a lot and you start to feel a human connection to the place,” he added, sounding a lot like the foreign correspondent he once was.

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