Loss of local media keeps Dean Baquet up at night
By Newsplexer Projects
In a wide-ranging and sometimes intimate conversation with 500 of his closest professional colleagues — close because they’ve been meeting in his building all week — New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet confessed Friday about what keeps him up at night.
He also confided to the INMA World Congress of News Media audience how (in)capable he is at producing news video, the significance he attaches to datelines, what worries him about the loss of local media outlets nationwide, and where he feels the Times has improved since miscalculating online publishing in 2014 and misjudging the election in 2016.
One thing he declined to reveal, though, is what U.S. President Donald Trump wanted when he called once to personally complain about something.
Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, shared his desire that children who grew up in challenging environments — like he did — still have access to trustworthy media. .
Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, shared his desire that children who grew up in challenging environments — like he did — still have access to trustworthy media. .
“I’m trying to decide whether I can say … I think I’m going to save what he exactly said for my memoir, if I ever write one,” Baquet said.
The 62-year-old career journalist and New Orleans native has been leading the Times’ news operations through what must be one of the most challenging periods ever in the 167-year history of America’s flagship broadsheet. His newsroom has not been entirely spared the financial ravages of the global decline in newspaper readership and advertising, and his editorial staff is attacked almost daily by a much-aggrieved, name-calling leader of the free world.
“We’ve evolved,” Baquet said of how he’s handled Trump’s bashings. “I remember the first time he attacked us. It was shortly after the election, the first time he attacked very powerfully. … We had never had a president attack us in such a public way. And we responded, forcefully.
