The choice of Joseph Kahn, 57, as executive editor of the New York Times, perhaps the most powerful role in American journalism, was already expected — and even supported by Dean Baquet six years ago.
“I strongly believe that Joe should be a candidate to succeed me,” the executive editor said in 2016, announcing Kahn as No. 2 in the Newsroom. It was shortly after the return to the newspaper, as editor of Opinion, of James Bennett. Considered more open to conservative thinking, he was seen as a favorite for succession.
The backstage dispute between Kahn and Bennet ended in 2020, with the second leaving after publishing an article by a Republican senator who revolted the newsroom.
Kahn will take over as nominated by Baquet, as publisher AG Sulzberger made clear in his internal communiqué, for a newspaper that is no longer tied to national politics. In the role since 2017, the fifth generation of the family that has controlled the paper since 1896, Sulzberger noted that Kahn brings to the job “a sophisticated knowledge of the forces that are shaping the world”.
This is essentially a reference to his experience covering China, which he began in 1989 as a freelancer, when he was arrested and expelled, and which he continued as a correspondent for the New York Times and an international editor. His task now, the publisher said, will be to direct “a global newsroom that has grown in size, complexity and ambition.”
Baquet’s departure caps a round of exchanges at major American news organizations, from the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times to CNN and Reuters, that have slammed the end of the Trump administration — and resistance to it. In the case of the NYT, it comes after a change in the direction of the company, with the entry of CEO Meredith Kopit Levien and the project to make the newspaper a reference for English-speakers in the world.
She projects that there will be 100 million of them paying for journalism by the end of this decade. Kahn’s job, by Levien’s reckoning, will be to make a newspaper for at least a quarter of them. When indicting Kahn as number 2, Baquet argued that the role of executive editor was no longer limited to the newsroom, advancing through strategic actions, aimed at the business itself. It is what transfers now to the chosen one.
At 65, Baquet has reached the age when executive editors traditionally leave the NYT job. According to Sulzberger’s statement, he will remain with the paper to “spearhead an exciting new project.”
