Bill Keller on the Liberal New York Times....and More
On Point’s Tom Ashbrook produced a seeming rarity in today’s news world: an intelligent hour-long discussion, this one with New York Times Editor Bill Keller. They hit many familiar points about the changing news business, with the usual maddening phone calls from readers (!), picking apart this and that.
Given the week’s news, you could hear Keller take his deepest breath when asked whether the Times will agree to “share” with 30% of its circulation revenue with Apple. After the breath, he noted “it was above his pay grade.” Calling Janet Robinson.
Early in the conversation, Keller had talked about those essential journalistic qualities of fairness, accuracy, timeliness and integrity, in describing what’s key to what distinguishes a news organization like the Times. Later, though, when asked about Times being liberal, I was struck by how the Times’ — and Americans’ — struggle with that term. Keller cited a column of Dan Okrent, the Times’ first public editor. It was entitled: “Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” Keller talked about the oft-quoted first line of the column, “Of course, it is,” and then he went into a defense of liberal, urban values of being open, free-wheeling and tolerant, though distinguishing how it’s not, of course, “Liberal” politically.
It’s a tough dance, and one that conservatives love to watch. I’m struck by how different the dance is in the UK, another English-speaking country with a fairly decent history of democracy and free press. There, the Guardian — which is now getting a global profile for its work, courtesy of its embrace of the Web — is proudly liberal. In fact, it still calls itself the “world’s leading liberal voice”.
This is a tale of two countries, but one that may play out differently in our digital age. Many readers, in the U.S. and increasingly worldwide, respect the Times’ small-l liberal values; those reflect how they take in the world. So I wonder as the Times becomes more fully digital in a news world dividing itself differently into Huffington Post/News Corp/Guardian niches, whether someday, it may more fully embrace those liberal traditions and instincts.
