Thread by @jayrosen_nyu

Dean Baquet — top editor, New York Times, one of the most powerful people in journalism — recently gave a long interview about his views on newsroom objectivity. longform.org/posts/longform… It's the most revealing he has been on the topic. This thread is about one key part of it. 1/

The interview with Baquet was a kind of reply to this essay by @WesleyLowery, "A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists." nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opi… (You should read it.) Baquet and Lowery are both Black, but of different generations, another theme of the interview. 2/

In @CJR, lead newsletter writer @Jon_Allsop gave a good summary of the Baquet interview, which was conducted by Longform's @maxlinsky. cjr.org/the_media_toda… Read that and you'll know if you want to listen to the whole thing. (It's 90 minutes.) For me it is a required text. 3/

"Neutral 'objective journalism' is constructed atop a pyramid of subjective decision-making," @WesleyLowery had written, "which stories to cover, how intensely to cover those stories, which sources to seek out and include, which pieces of information are highlighted..." 4/

As I expected, Baquet did not contest this kind of point. He conceded that which stories to cover was a judgment call. There was no strictly "objective" way to decide that. Nor could the decision-makers free themselves from the imprint of their background and life experiences. 5/

But, he said, he still sought a place for classic objectivity, even though the term had become a "cartoon." He said he would talk instead about independence, fairness and empathy for others. Plus seeing the full story. But he kept lapsing back into "objectivity" as shorthand. 6/

The fulcrum of the interview was Baquet's distinction between what is "core" to the Times as an institution (including objectivity, but don't call it that...) and what is merely "habit," the cake of custom, how they've always done things. Habit can change, the core cannot. 7/

There's lots more in the podcast that is instructive for a Times-watcher, especially Baquet's account of growing up poor, Black and Catholic in New Orleans, and the transformative effect that journalism had upon him. But I'm going to focus on a moment that stood out for me. 8/

Baquet: "Black and Latino journalists have told us that we only accomplished half of what we set out to do, and they're right." (44:04) We set out to diversify the newsroom, he said, but we thought these diversely talented people wanted to be just like us— and they do not! 9/

Diverse hiring does not equal inclusion, he acknowledged. The other half of the project is to create a newsroom where journalists who do not want to be younger versions of Baquet and his lieutenants can thrive. He said the Times had not done that. But he vowed that it will. 10/

The last few weeks had given Baquet a "mission" for his final years as editor. The people the Times hired to expand, update and diversify itself had been expected to learn Times journalism. His new mission was to let them TEACH the Times. That's my phrasing. Here is his: 11/

"Help create a modern diverse New York Times where young Black, Latino and Asian American people come into the newsroom, feel like they can have have long careers here like me, and feel like they can affect the place. And we're not there."

The key words: "affect the place." 12/

"I'm in a unique position to fix it," Baquet said. He's right. Black man with experience, power, institutional support, sitting atop the Times when it has the means to expand. "We've gotten the business to a certain point where we can do more stuff."

He has what he needs. 13/

Will it happen? Can the Times learn to be taught?

A revealing moment came when @maxlinsky pressed Baquet about an institutional core that stays constant. "What I hear you saying is you got to hold on to what's core and be willing to change what's outside of that." But... 14/

(And this was a great question.) Is there room at the Times "for something to go from outside a core institutional value to become one?"

"It happens all the time," Baquet replied. Gay rights, transgender people, civil rights. But that is an answer to a different question. 15/

That was an answer to, "Does the Times adapt to changes in social mores and shifts in public opinion on what's acceptable?" Clearly it does. At times. @maxlinsky, I thought, was asking a different question. Can a journalism that was considered deviant become a core practice? 16/

Or equally to the point: Can forms of journalism that were once considered core to the Times get redefined as inessential, or even harmful? I put the matter in this more challenging way because I think that's what it will take for Baquet to succeed at his mission, which is... 17/

... teaching the Times that it can itself be taught by a new generation of journalists who may have different ideas about what is "core," and what's worth keeping in the tradition the Sulzberger family has established— and innovated on over the years, including under Baquet. 18/

"America’s newsrooms too often deprive their readers of plainly stated facts that could expose reporters to accusations of partiality or imbalance," wrote @WesleyLowery. True. In my view, this is a core practice at the Times. Are the editors ready to recognize that— and stop? 19/

"I’ve been among a chorus of mainstream journalists who have called for our industry to abandon the appearance of objectivity as the aspirational journalistic standard," Lowery wrote. That standard is Times practice, part of its social media policy. 20/ pressthink.org/2017/11/pricin…

For helping the Times evolve into a digital product with a new business model, Dean Baquet is justifiably proud. Today it is stronger than ever: 1600 journalists, and a clear strategy (digital subscriptions) to guide it into the future. This is a huge historic accomplishment. 21/

Can he, in his final few years, guide the newsroom out of one era in its thought, and into another? I "read" the @longform interview as his atttempt to say: We at the Times are all on the same page about the core values of journalism. And for the rest of it, we can evolve. 22/

Maybe that's right. But there's a good chance it isn't. Maybe over the years newsroom objectivity mutated into something that is actually hurting "the paper," as they still call it. Maybe that's why the project to diversify the Times turns out to be missing its other half. 23/

And maybe there's a reason the Times — and Baquet himself — cannot make sense of the criticism that by maintaining Times style it has helped to normalize the Trump presidency. In the interview he said "normalize" had become a propaganda term. "We don't do that." 24/

END