Thursday, March 18, 2004
Sulzberger Keynotes
Excerpts from Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s keynote Q&A session:
On the Jayson Blair scandal:
Two pressures were brought to bear on the times during those times:
The other was 9/11:
Sulzberger said the Times will still hire young journalists:
On the pace of news:
When Sulzberger was a reporter at the Raleigh Times:
On his goals for the New York Times:
On the Jayson Blair scandal:
Two pressures were brought to bear on the times during those times:
We were no longer feeding the New York Times - once a day you took a snapshot of the world - at 9 p.m. We would stop the world, write it up and give it to everybody at 6 in the morning, and wait for the next snapshot. Those days are gone.
The other was 9/11:
"We were in hyperdrive and the newsroom and its journalists were being pushed very hard."
Sulzberger said the Times will still hire young journalists:
"Jayson Blair was an individual. He made individual choices. We will still take risks on people. We will still trust people. We will still work hard to bring in younger journalists to cover our world. We will continue our commitment to diversity.
On the pace of news:
One of the most fascinating things about being in the middle of a scandal or a big story is how fast things move now. it's very hard to get ahead of the story, in part driven by the web.
When Sulzberger was a reporter at the Raleigh Times:
Every story had a three-day cycle. first day you'd be covering the event, the second day the reaction to the event, and the third day, the 'thumbsucker'" which explained what the event meant. "Now, if you don't do that in the first day, you're not doing your job."
On his goals for the New York Times:
My master plan for the newspaper: to reach that knowledge audience around the world in every format that we can, with print being the dominant, but with television and the internet playing increasingly important and dynamic roles.
