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Alexandra Bruell, a news-industry columnist for the Wall Street Journal, reported on Friday about professionals at The New York Times who are “applying intellectual purity testing” to reports about” sensitive topics like the trans community and social justice. These college graduates do n’t bow down to the wisdom of their elders, who may still wish to portray themselves as neutral and unconstrained by ideological camps.
The Bruell narrative was headlined:
New York Times employees seek to quench the office retaliation.
Management reaffirms its focus on independence and neutrality following domestic upheaval caused by coverage of sensitive subjects like the Israel-Gaza war.
Bruell’s internal squabble over Hamas ‘ use of sexual assault on October 7 sparked a multiple-story fascination for NPR advertising writer David Folkenflik after a worker for the Daily podcast, which airs on lots of NPR channels, complained to The Intercept, a radical-left website.
According to Executive Editor , Joe Kahn ,” the idea that people dips into that process in the middle, and finds something that they thought might be interesting or harmful to the story in progress, and therefore provides that to people inside, felt to me and my colleagues as a breakdown in the kind of trust and collaboration that’s important in the editorial process.” ” I have n’t seen that happen before” . ,  ,
It’s a little amusing when newspapers that regularly rely on leakers have to deal with internal leakers. They do n’t think it will lead to” a breakdown of trust and collaboration that’s necessary in the governing process.”
It’s also amusing that Kahn is aware that some of America’s top colleges are sending him employees who believe that neutrality is unacceptable.
Kahn noted that the organization has hired a lot of digital-savvy workers who are skilled in fields like design and product engineering but were n’t trained in producing independent news. He also made the comment that colleges are n’t training new hires to betolerant of opposing viewpoints.
Young adults who are entering the educational system are less accustomed to this kind of open discussion, this kind of robust exchange of opinions about issues they feel strongly about than may have been the case in the past, he said, adding that the onus is on the Times to instill values like independence in its employees.
Bruell noted some pitched battles over transgender issues, from an internal Slack forum over , a trans- related opinion piece by Times opinion columnist Pamela Paul to an open letter signed by more than 1, 000 contributors over the article ,” The Battle Over Gender Therapy” , , and the framing of the article ,” When Students Change Gender Identity, and Parents Do n’t Know” . ,
She also recalled how internal staff issues caused the resignation of science reporter Donald McNeil and editorial-page editor James Bennet.
Finally, we had to love what publisher Arthur Gregg Sulzberger thinks the “emotion- free” stories are:  ,
According to Kahn, the Times ‘ national desk is now bigger and better equipped to cover an unprecedented election. The Times will also be more committed to covering misinformation in the 2024 election, with a team of eight to nine people, he said.
Sulzberger made a statement about covering Trump in January while making a trip to the Washington bureau. It was imperative to keep Trump coverage emotion- free, he told staffers, according to people who attended. He referenced the Times story,  ,” Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First” , , by Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, as a good example of fact- based and fair coverage.  ,
