(Biased) Thoughts From Jill Abramson, (NYT's new)Executive Editor

NYT ^ | 10 sep | Brisbane

[flowerplough]

JILL ABRAMSON: ...The idea that women journalists bring a different taste in stories or sensibility isn’t true. I think everybody here recognizes and loves a good story, and the occasions are rare when there is disagreement about that.

Will you be a command-and-control type of leader, or one who leads by more subtle means?

I definitely don’t see myself as command-and-control. I do see myself as someone who has a lot of story ideas. As managing editor I never approached an editor with “Here’s my story idea and it must be done,” but in a more “What do you think about this?” Often — not always — the story would come together and be done. I truly believe that the best story ideas bubble up from reporters, but I know that the journalists who work here want to know what the editors like and the kinds of stories they want. I am very catholic in my taste. I love a good profile.

...

The legendary Times executive editor A. M. Rosenthal once told a colleague he felt the need to steer The Times to the right to compensate for the leftward political leanings of some staff. Will you do that?

I sometimes try not only to remind myself but my colleagues that the way we view an issue in New York is not necessarily the way it is viewed in the rest of America. And I am pretty scrupulous about when we apply our investigative firepower to politicians that we not do it in a way that favors one way of thinking or one party over the other. I think the mandate is to keep the paper straight, but I don’t think you have to lean right to do that.

[flowerplough]

...that we not do it in a way that favors one way of thinking or one party over the other?

"THE (New York Times) PUBLIC EDITOR: Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? By DANIEL OKRENT Published: July 25, 2004

OF course it is.

The fattest file on my hard drive is jammed with letters from the disappointed, the dismayed and the irate who find in this newspaper a liberal bias that infects not just political coverage but a range of issues from abortion to zoology to the appointment of an admitted Democrat to be its watchdog. (That would be me.) By contrast, readers who attack The Times from the left -- and there are plenty -- generally confine their complaints to the paper's coverage of electoral politics and foreign policy.

I'll get to the politics-and-policy issues this fall (I want to watch the campaign coverage before I conclude anything), but for now my concern is the flammable stuff that ignites the right. These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you've been reading the paper with your eyes closed." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/the-public-editor-is-the-new-york-times-a-liberal-newspaper.html

[Zuben Elgenubi]

It sounds as if Jill is still interviewing for the job. Speaking to the readership. The choir, if you like.

I enjoy her statements about the "weakness" of the NYT. She answers that the employees are so, so talented that other media are always trying to hire them away. LOL. Our major weakness is the talent of our employees. This is the type of tripe recent college graduates spew during their first job interviews.

Make no doubt, her audience is the readers of the NY Times, not FR.