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- Wednesday 21st February: A. G. Sulzberger, “Our industry needs to think bigger”
Wednesday 21st February: A. G. Sulzberger, “Our industry needs to think bigger”
Good morning! Today’s edition is brought to you by Peter.
If you want to know everything about the New York Times publisher Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, this interview is a pretty good place to start. I now know way more about the family that has owned the paper since 1896 than I ever expected to, especially about how A.G. - the sixth Sulzberger to run the Gray Lady - came to the job.
As nepo babies go, A.G. is pretty impressive. He’s been in the news business all his career and he’s been involved with some of the NYT’s biggest innovations… he actually wrote that 100-page innovation report back in the day. But this interview isn’t just a mid-career retrospective.
He talks about job cuts at US newspapers and the different challenges faced by national and local news organisations; the importance of giving staff the confidence to report independently; criticism over the Times’ coverage of Gaza; the paper’s opinion section; and of course, the rise of generative AI. It’s a long one, but if you’re interested in the Sulzberger family’s newspaper, it’s well worth a read.
Thanks to Jacob for highlighting the Vanity Fair story that talks about reporters at the New York Times who are desperate to get into its ‘The Morning’ newsletter and the 5 million inboxes of its readers everyday. Jacob compares that situation and the success of ‘The Morning’ with publishers that want to have great newsletters but allocate “Maybe half a person’s time…”. Bonkers!
Esther asked ‘What does good local news look like?’ in yesterday’s newsletter. Maybe it looks a bit like the Guildford Dragon, an online newspaper that started in 2012, run entirely by a small team of volunteers and with formal charitable status. The benefits could provide tax relief and open the doors to philanthropic funding, something that is already keeping many US news organisations afloat.
We often see crowdfunding campaigns for publications, but some publishers have even crowdfunded specific features like apps. Let us know what you think in our community forum.
This is the umpteenth Ofcom investigation into GB News (I have no idea if the rumours that the regulator’s staff account for a material percentage of the channel’s viewing figures are true). Styling itself as ‘Britain’s Election Channel’ we can only expect more great political coverage from the GB News crew this year. In case you were wondering, Rishi’s GB plea to the viewers failed, his party lost two by-elections a couple of days later.
