The Meritocracy in Action

The New York Times has a new editor and once again, it’s someone who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and just made it on their own through talent, skill, and hard work.

In picking Joe Kahn, the Times’ managing editor, to replace Baquet, the newspaper is signaling that it has no plans to rethink its approach. Baquet and A.G. Sulzberger, the Times’ publisher, have consistently dismissed the idea that journalistic norms of objectivity should be tossed out. The view of the Times leadership is that journalism is more threatened by a lack of trust, which only deepens when readers sense that the paper has its thumb on the partisan scale.

Kahn, holder of the newsroom’s second-highest job since September 2016, has always been a front-runner for the top spot. He’s been a reporter in the Washington bureau, bureau chief in Beijing, and international editor. Now fifty-seven, he was president of the Crimson, at Harvard, and his father cofounded Staples, the office supply chain. In announcing Kahn’s elevation, Sulzberger called him “a brilliant journalist and a brave and principled leader.”

Super rich kid from Harvard who never had to work a day in his life and will question nothing about the practices of American journalism as fascism descends on America?

In advance of this week’s announcement, Kahn and Baquet sat down for the ritually awkward job of talking with their own newspaper. On the question of the debate over domestic politics, Kahn said, “We don’t know where the political zeitgeist will move over time.… Rather than chase that, we want to commit and recommit to being independent.”

Of course.

At least our new Media Elite Friend takes a classy picture.

I’m sure he spends a lot of time on the floor.