Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eleven, Jill Abramson became executive editor of
Speaker 1: the New York Times, the first woman ever to hold
Speaker 1: that position. On the day of her appointment, she was
Speaker 1: quick to acknowledge those who had transformed the role of
Speaker 1: women in journalism before her. She cited, among others, Anna Quinland,
Speaker 1: Maureen Dowd, and Nan Robertson, a reporter at the paper
Speaker 1: for over three decades, but there's no denying that Jill
Speaker 1: had put in her time. She was the Times Washington
Speaker 1: bureau chief and then it's managing editor before she was
Speaker 1: offered the big job at her hometown paper, currently based
Speaker 1: on Eighth Avenue between forty one Street on the West
Speaker 1: Side of Manhattan. I am totally a west Side or
Speaker 1: My parents were actually both born at home on the
Speaker 1: Upper west Side. I mean everyone on both sides of
Speaker 1: my family. No, they still live on the Upper west Side,
Speaker 1: like stacked together. I just feel like I'm walking in
Speaker 1: my sixth grade. For you, it's home. It's very much home.
Speaker 1: So he went to Harvard to study history, history and literature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and was writing something in some fashion. Writing was what
Speaker 1: was on your horizon from the beginning. From back then,
Speaker 1: I knew I always liked to write, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: that I set out to be a journalist. Freshman year
Speaker 1: um was two for me, which sounds like the Stone Age,
Speaker 1: but it was, you know, the McGovern Nickson election. It
Speaker 1: was the dawn of Watergate. And so all through my
Speaker 1: college years, Woodward and Bernstein, you know, I just like
Speaker 1: glued to their reporting and thrilled by that coverage. It
Speaker 1: seemed so ground raking and brave to me. So I
Speaker 1: kind of fell in love with, at least the journalism
Speaker 1: end of writing. I always liked to write, was a
Speaker 1: fairly fascile rioter. But when you leave Harvard in seventies six,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, you go pretty heavily into the
Speaker 1: world of law. You were. The first writing you did
Speaker 1: was with the first job I had in journalism was
Speaker 1: for Time Magazine and Boston. I had been a stringer,
Speaker 1: which is a part time reporter for them in college.
Speaker 1: So how long did that last? That lasted two years?
Speaker 1: So that's your apprenticeship. That was my apprenticeship. And what
Speaker 1: kind of thing did you cover there? Oh? You name it?
Speaker 1: From the hot socks craze back then to bus sing.
Speaker 1: I mean it was from lifestyle to big issues unfolding.
Speaker 1: Where do you go from there? Well, what I did
Speaker 1: after time as I worked in the election unit of
Speaker 1: NBC News. I'm a total political junkie, and uh work there,
Speaker 1: and I met Steve Brill, who's another prominent journalist here
Speaker 1: whose specialty was law, and Steve and I just got friendly,
Speaker 1: and he was starting the American Lawyer magazine. And while
Speaker 1: lawyers didn't particularly interest me, a number of journalists who
Speaker 1: I knew from Harvard or or in New York had
Speaker 1: gone to work for him because it was going to
Speaker 1: be a writer early kind of investigative magazine that wasn't
Speaker 1: cheering on lawyers, but was really examining the power that
Speaker 1: lawyers and law firms wheeled behind legal perspective. So that
Speaker 1: is so when that was brand new, I cast and
Speaker 1: I worked for that magazine for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and then Steve bought a legal newspaper in Washington called
Speaker 1: Legal Times, and when I was thirty, he's said, poof,
Speaker 1: I'm making you the editor of this newspaper. And I
Speaker 1: moved to Washington and did that and you're ready to
Speaker 1: be the editor of something I don't. I certainly didn't
Speaker 1: think I was ready, but he thought I was ready.
Speaker 1: How long were you there? I was there for a
Speaker 1: long time. I was there for about seven or eight
Speaker 1: years and working for Steve both in New York and
Speaker 1: in Washington. And then I went to the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journals for people who are late, people like myself. The
Speaker 1: journalist obviously of you now as a pretty right of
Speaker 1: center organization, the opinion page and so forth. And I'm
Speaker 1: not going to characterize you as being either direction of center,
Speaker 1: but was that in an interesting experience for you? How
Speaker 1: would you characterize the political culture of the journal? Then?
Speaker 1: The political culture of the journal then was set. The
Speaker 1: editorial pages were extremely conservative. I mean Paul Jego, who
Speaker 1: was the editor of those pages now is the of
Speaker 1: Bob Bartley, who was for a very long time the
Speaker 1: editor of the editorial journalism at Giant Conservative. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, operating as a news reporter in Washington at
Speaker 1: the Journal, like at the New York Times, there's a
Speaker 1: traditional separation between the editorial department and editorial views of
Speaker 1: the paper and news gathering. And but you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't know that. Even a lot of
Speaker 1: political people in Washington didn't know it. So in Washington
Speaker 1: it was actually it advantaged me because in for example,
Speaker 1: when Gingrich took over the House, like, there were Republicans
Speaker 1: who would gladly talk to me. I have I have
Speaker 1: always had good Republican sources because I think they felt
Speaker 1: I can trust you because you're from the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: And so it was interesting, it was sometimes awkward because
Speaker 1: in it, wellour Jane Mayor of the New Yorker who
Speaker 1: was then at the Journal, and I wrote a book
Speaker 1: about the Clarence Thomas Anita Hill. Did you have to
Speaker 1: get permission from Norm Pearl Starte and then Paul ste
Speaker 1: on the other side of the screen, right, And you know,
Speaker 1: Jane and I worked on that book for several years
Speaker 1: and found, you know, by doing a lot of in
Speaker 1: depth reporting that we thought the weight of evidence for
Speaker 1: sure was that Anita Hill had told the truth. Then
Speaker 1: there had been a big campaign on the right to
Speaker 1: destroy her credibility, not only during the hearings themselves, but
Speaker 1: in the years after and when our book was published
Speaker 1: at made you know, pretty big spot that it wasn't
Speaker 1: my first book, but was uh the book that I'm
Speaker 1: proudest to have. And why would you say it was it? Was?
Speaker 1: It a combination of all these things. But was it
Speaker 1: what happened to Hill? The way they dealt with Hill.
Speaker 1: I think why um the book was so important is that, uh,
Speaker 1: those hearings ended and everyone in Washington just said it's
Speaker 1: he said, she said, and we'll never know. And for me,
Speaker 1: that is bait. I really believe if you do enough digging,
Speaker 1: in enough reporting, you can find the truth in most
Speaker 1: and act accordingly. But why it created awkwardness at the
Speaker 1: Journal is that when the book came out, even though
Speaker 1: the journal's news pages ran an excerpt of the book,
Speaker 1: the editorial page wrote an editorial like ripping, ripping, so
Speaker 1: that you're passing in the in the hallway. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was post pause, you go himself, He'll let you
Speaker 1: know in no uncertain terms in writing fact, that's right,
Speaker 1: how straightforward with him? No, it's was his right, that's
Speaker 1: your business. What I always walk away from the Thomas
Speaker 1: event was that in the arc of decades of political
Speaker 1: life in this country, there's a kind of a score
Speaker 1: that some people keep a moral score that kind of
Speaker 1: like you guys had your chap aquittic when they're like,
Speaker 1: some of our guys are going to get a pass,
Speaker 1: like some of your guys got to pass. They don't
Speaker 1: push too hard here on the Thomas things. So he
Speaker 1: did some injrew things to this woman. That's a very
Speaker 1: perceptive point, because Bork had gone down in flames after
Speaker 1: a very vigorous liberal campaign against him, and so there
Speaker 1: was a feeling of not again. Right, So when you're
Speaker 1: at the Journal and you've got the first Bush term
Speaker 1: and the first Clinton term, while you're at the Journal, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was it like for you covering Washington in the
Speaker 1: scene between those two? What was it like covering the
Speaker 1: Bush White House? What was it like covering the Clinton
Speaker 1: White House? The Bush white House was, you know, not
Speaker 1: that different from what the Reagan White House had been.
Speaker 1: Do you have much interaction with Bush himself? No. I
Speaker 1: had an investigative beat on the nexus of money in politics.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't the White House car respondent ever at
Speaker 1: the Journal or at the Times. I was always an
Speaker 1: investigative reporter on the political team. And who was responsible
Speaker 1: would you say for the time as being as concerned
Speaker 1: about campaign finance issues as they were then? Was it
Speaker 1: you was it Were they saying to yes in that direction?
Speaker 1: I think the Times wanted to haire me because that
Speaker 1: was a big strength of mine. I was well known
Speaker 1: for covering at and had um at the Journal covered
Speaker 1: just about every scandal of the eighties and early to
Speaker 1: mid nineties set. When the Citizens United case came down,
Speaker 1: how did you feel about that? Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: I thought it definitely would change, uh the landscape of
Speaker 1: how money was raised and spent in the election, and
Speaker 1: and I think it and other court decisions did because
Speaker 1: we were in this sort of wild west of spending
Speaker 1: UH and the advent of the super PACs and all
Speaker 1: of that in the campaign. It didn't really surprise me
Speaker 1: because you know you had asked about Bush before. UM.
Speaker 1: George Herbert Walker Bush actually built uh the state of
Speaker 1: the art big money machine that was called Team one
Speaker 1: hundred back in his day, and that was UM involving
Speaker 1: big soft money donations which were ultimately outlawed. But in
Speaker 1: some ways, you know, Tip O'Neill was right money fund away, UH.
Speaker 1: So mainly I just knew it would have a big impact,
Speaker 1: UH and that it would create a lot of great
Speaker 1: stories for the Times, which it did, and then Clinton
Speaker 1: came in, and how was that different for you? Clinton,
Speaker 1: of course had his own set of fundraising excesses in
Speaker 1: his nineties six reelection campaign. That was when he was
Speaker 1: having the White House sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom for
Speaker 1: big dardenings, right exactly. So that's why the Times like
Speaker 1: wanted me because the journal was beating the Times on
Speaker 1: that story. And then uh, Maureen Dowd accosts you somewhere
Speaker 1: and uh, she's got some ideas for you. Maureen walked
Speaker 1: up to me. It was at a book party for
Speaker 1: Michael Kelly, who's another great journalist who's sadly died in
Speaker 1: in Ira. But it was at a book party for him. Um,
Speaker 1: and the Times was getting a new bureau chief in Washington,
Speaker 1: and I knew more. And in fact, we sat across
Speaker 1: a table much like we're sitting at now, across from
Speaker 1: each other during the Clarence Thomas Anita Hill hearings, which
Speaker 1: is kind of where we bond. Uh. She came up
Speaker 1: to me at the book party and she said, do
Speaker 1: you know of any good women we can hire? And
Speaker 1: so I looked at her with us kind of what
Speaker 1: am I chop liver look? And she said you would
Speaker 1: never leave the journal. And I said, oh, what you think,
Speaker 1: because I was like doing really well there and she
Speaker 1: just didn't think I would want to. But what she
Speaker 1: didn't know is that, you know, I grew up in
Speaker 1: a family that had to print home delivery subscriptions to
Speaker 1: the Times because my mom didn't like anyone touching the
Speaker 1: section that had the puzzle own. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: every time I had a front page piece in the journal,
Speaker 1: my mother's brother would have to calm my parents and say,
Speaker 1: go by the journal. Jilli's got a front page piece. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the New York Times was you know, the
Speaker 1: total voice of authority was my father. That was the
Speaker 1: way it wasn't my So Maureen says this to you, guys,
Speaker 1: are you have the one of my chopped liver moment
Speaker 1: with ma And then and she had like the new
Speaker 1: bureau chief called me up for lunch, and uh, he
Speaker 1: made me a job offer, and I came. And then
Speaker 1: Morien and I became completely inseparable. And how long did
Speaker 1: were you in that position? I was in the Washington
Speaker 1: Bureau from nineties seven. I went into editing there. I
Speaker 1: became the deputy bureau chief to micro Riscus who was
Speaker 1: hired me and then after the two thousand Stalemate campaign,
Speaker 1: I became bureau chief and then I had that job
Speaker 1: for three years. And so covering the Clinton impeachment, did
Speaker 1: you did you well? I mean I was in I
Speaker 1: was in Africa at the time, huh watching the proceedings
Speaker 1: didn't miss you know. I watched it on the BBC
Speaker 1: on Sky TV in the in South Africa where I
Speaker 1: was with my ex wife while she made a film,
Speaker 1: and we watched it. For me, I always wondered, did
Speaker 1: anybody really cover the Clinton impeachment as well as they
Speaker 1: might have? I think what was true is that, you know,
Speaker 1: every reporter who was covering the main proceedings was probably
Speaker 1: getting more information from the Prosecutor's office, from Ken Star's
Speaker 1: office than they were through reporting around the president. And
Speaker 1: mainly more people should have been reporting on what actually
Speaker 1: had happened and how this case di up. And at
Speaker 1: the Times, I you know, the Times was lucky in
Speaker 1: that they have a big bureau and they sicked Uh
Speaker 1: an investigative reporter named Don van Atta and and me
Speaker 1: onto uh on two Stars office. And I had some
Speaker 1: very good sources around the White House in the White House,
Speaker 1: and also from my years of covering the legal community
Speaker 1: in conservative legal circles. And what Don and I did
Speaker 1: is show that it was Monica Winsky Linda Tripp. Didn't
Speaker 1: you know, Linda Trip didn't appear on ken Star's doorstep.
Speaker 1: Serendipitously that ever since a very conservative magazine named The
Speaker 1: American Spectator had surface and named Paula Jones, there was
Speaker 1: this plan with a bunch of young, relatively unknown conservative
Speaker 1: lawyers working to make that into the case that being
Speaker 1: on in the basis of those are the two sticks
Speaker 1: they were up together to get the whole thing going.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting because as for someone again as
Speaker 1: a late person, you look at the arc of political coverage,
Speaker 1: and you wonder where there are advances like glaciers almost
Speaker 1: in retreats of the power and the authority of investigative
Speaker 1: journalism in the post Ellsberg, in the post water Gate,
Speaker 1: like that was a time in which the kind of
Speaker 1: vesuvius of all this kind of work changed the course
Speaker 1: of our country. And do you find now that when,
Speaker 1: especially in your position now, people will come to you
Speaker 1: like I know that if I worked at the times,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it wouldn't be diminished by the fact that
Speaker 1: I was experienced and I was trained, I went to Columbia,
Speaker 1: I'd still have my nature. And if my nature was
Speaker 1: to come to you and say, man, I got a
Speaker 1: story of you. I found out this stuff about this
Speaker 1: and this and this. Do you literally have to say
Speaker 1: to yourself, we can we have so much of that
Speaker 1: in the paper. No, I don't say that, but when
Speaker 1: someone is so eager a little bit, I have a
Speaker 1: skeptical side, which is also saying, you know, we have
Speaker 1: to independently report and see as this really the great story,
Speaker 1: because you know, there have been a number of cases
Speaker 1: in journalism, some of them at the times, where you're
Speaker 1: getting all kinds of leaks from a prosecutor and you know,
Speaker 1: well that wasn't from from a prosecutor, that was from
Speaker 1: Iraqi defectors, mainland government officials. But where you're getting you
Speaker 1: know only one side of it. But you know, since
Speaker 1: you mentioned, uh, Judy Miller, I think that that's actually
Speaker 1: a great case that I think about all the time
Speaker 1: because I was Washington Bureau chief at that time, and
Speaker 1: Judy didn't work for me, but she did a lot
Speaker 1: of reporting viously in Washington and at the Bush, White
Speaker 1: House and other places, and where the Iraqi defectors were
Speaker 1: telling these you know, stories about Saddam supposed active w
Speaker 1: m D programs and uh, these same defectors had told
Speaker 1: their stories to people inside the government. So in some ways,
Speaker 1: like the government sources pretended that they were confirming the
Speaker 1: information given by the defectors. But it was like one
Speaker 1: horrible feedback loop. And meanwhile that was very loud because
Speaker 1: the defectors and the people in the government were aiding
Speaker 1: you know, journalists to focus on these stories and in
Speaker 1: real time. I don't think I appreciated this as I
Speaker 1: should have. There were dissident analysts at the CIA who
Speaker 1: you know, were very doubtful of the EVA. With your
Speaker 1: perspective on history, do you in any way have more
Speaker 1: sympathy for Bush forty three and Shaney in that crowd
Speaker 1: for the way they reacted in the post nine eleven
Speaker 1: world or did they acted improperly based on the information
Speaker 1: they had. I think it's a combination. The Iraq connection.
Speaker 1: We could certainly today, but I think they there was
Speaker 1: real reason to feel after nine eleven. I was in Washington,
Speaker 1: we had you know, tax in front of our building.
Speaker 1: You know, it was a change world than that immediate
Speaker 1: post nine eleven period. You know, it felt Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean on nine eleven, Uh, we did so many stories
Speaker 1: that day out of Washington's more stories than we've ever had.
Speaker 1: And the story list from that day still hang outside
Speaker 1: of the Bureaucuese office. And you know, I didn't get
Speaker 1: home until I don't know, three o'clock in the morning
Speaker 1: or so, and drove right past the burning Pentagon, and
Speaker 1: you know, my whole way home, you know, there were
Speaker 1: flags already up on all the streets. And then I
Speaker 1: got home to our house and you know, even my husband,
Speaker 1: who isn't such a you know, overt patriot, had hung
Speaker 1: our absurdly large Fourth of July flag, And you know,
Speaker 1: at that point I just sat in my car and
Speaker 1: kind of absorbed like it was changed. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: justify such a you know, misreading of intelligence and such
Speaker 1: an aggressive sales campaign for a war big Ston. Yeah,
Speaker 1: supposed dangers that we're not. How long did you stay
Speaker 1: in Washington after the attack of nine eleven, You were
Speaker 1: there to a wint one year. I um left in
Speaker 1: the summer of two thousand and three to go and
Speaker 1: to do to become the managing managing Now, so this
Speaker 1: is the beginning of a kind of a management the
Speaker 1: management phase of your career. Correct. I mean, you were right.
Speaker 1: It was sudden because at that point the executive editor
Speaker 1: and managing editors of the time it's had both been fired.
Speaker 1: And when you became managing editor, how did that condemn?
Speaker 1: What was the time of tumult at the paper was
Speaker 1: after the Jason Blair scandal, after big questions were being
Speaker 1: raised about that period of leadership and also about our
Speaker 1: pre war coverage. You know, no one came and said
Speaker 1: we're looking for a woman. But you know I was
Speaker 1: already in the leadership ranks as Washington Bureau chief. That's
Speaker 1: big time job. You know that James Riston had another
Speaker 1: lions of of journalism, and you know Bill Keller was
Speaker 1: named the new executive editor, and I had always thought
Speaker 1: the world of him, and you know he picked me.
Speaker 1: Was it a hard seller? Were you ready? Did you
Speaker 1: want to go back to New York too? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about coming back to New York, but
Speaker 1: because Washington seems so much more pure. I don't say
Speaker 1: it as a compliment to myself, but it was very
Speaker 1: much my test. Yes, my kind of town. Did you
Speaker 1: did you think about that career wise? Was management going
Speaker 1: to become a step back for you creatively? Even now?
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea that I could ever be managing
Speaker 1: editor of The New York Times, which is the number
Speaker 1: two jobs, just seemed like incredible. This was two thousand three, when,
Speaker 1: after only two years as executive editor, Howell Raines was
Speaker 1: forced out due to the Jason Blair plagiarism scandal. Rains
Speaker 1: had worked closely with Abramson when she was in Washington,
Speaker 1: and their relationship had been a difficult one. Eight years later,
Speaker 1: she had rains old job and strong ideas about the
Speaker 1: kind of boss she wanted to be coming up. Abramson
Speaker 1: talks about what she wants in a story. This is
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing. The
Speaker 1: newspaper business is in trouble. Print readership is plummeting, and
Speaker 1: although digital subscriptions of The New York Times have exceeded expectations,
Speaker 1: the Times is still navigating toward a new way of
Speaker 1: doing business. The New York Times staff has seen three
Speaker 1: rounds of buyouts in the last four years. Despite this,
Speaker 1: Jill Abramson didn't hesitate when she got the call from
Speaker 1: the Times publisher Arthur Salzburger. It was the brass ring
Speaker 1: and I jumped for it. And you know, I certainly
Speaker 1: knew that the newspaper industry certainly has been going through
Speaker 1: you know, rough waters, and that there are you know,
Speaker 1: secular changes in our industry. But I also have always
Speaker 1: known that the Times News report is like none other
Speaker 1: and that I think it's an indispensable institution and society,
Speaker 1: the Times, including editorial and all aspects of of our
Speaker 1: news report, And I just have always believed that it's
Speaker 1: so worth paying for that it you know, it didn't
Speaker 1: seem to me so odd. Everyone was saying that our
Speaker 1: pay subscription plan was a rash move and that news
Speaker 1: wants to be free and it would never work, and
Speaker 1: it has created a very significant revenue stream for us.
Speaker 1: It was a very smart decision of Arthur's to to
Speaker 1: go that way. And how do you juice that up
Speaker 1: a little bit? I mean, what's the strategy you must
Speaker 1: have some where you can how are you going to
Speaker 1: build build build that online presence. Well, we're gonna build
Speaker 1: on our digital subscription base for sure. What's the obstacle
Speaker 1: to getting people to because people will say, why pay
Speaker 1: when it's free, But it's not really free. Some of
Speaker 1: it's free. That our strategy is smart, that what we've
Speaker 1: on is for people who are you know, inveterate readers
Speaker 1: and frequent users of our website, we've asked them to pay.
Speaker 1: You know, they want to read many articles and spend
Speaker 1: significant time on our website. And yet we have a
Speaker 1: kind of basic good to go. You know, if you
Speaker 1: want on our apps, the top stories, you can look
Speaker 1: at those. If you come, you know, from a link
Speaker 1: from another site, you can read what you want to read.
Speaker 1: It's it's flexible. It lets us stay part of the
Speaker 1: open web while asking people who can't live without to
Speaker 1: pay something for it. Now you would come to the paper,
Speaker 1: I would assume it's like someone once said to me
Speaker 1: about um political figures. I remember when Giuliani was the
Speaker 1: mayor of New York, someone said to me that very
Speaker 1: often people will bring to these jobs the spirit of
Speaker 1: what they're previous career was. So Giuliani's job as a
Speaker 1: prosecutor was to catch people doing bad things. So he
Speaker 1: brought that to the mayoralty. His job as mayor was
Speaker 1: to catch bad people doing things. You know, uh, and
Speaker 1: you're kind of a crime stopper, mayoralty if you will.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if the same is true for you
Speaker 1: in your job as executive editor, meaning you had your beat,
Speaker 1: so to speak, you had your desk, you've had your coverage,
Speaker 1: most of it Washington based. Do you bring to the
Speaker 1: job your passion and and everybody knows that there's something
Speaker 1: can be done about it? Or did you have to
Speaker 1: did you have to broaden your passions in order to
Speaker 1: do the job. Well, my my interests were pretty broad.
Speaker 1: I grew up here in New York and I was
Speaker 1: like a mini version of a culture vulture. And you know,
Speaker 1: when when I was small and I'm a huge reader
Speaker 1: of books and articles about many things, sub ranging appetites
Speaker 1: going in I did and basically wouldn't. But I have
Speaker 1: a singular passion. And the singular passion with any subject
Speaker 1: is the story behind the store. You know, if if
Speaker 1: if it's the Metropolitan Museum choose as a new head,
Speaker 1: which they did Tom Campbell a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: I want to know, like what happened behind the scenes
Speaker 1: and what role did a Nette de Laurent to play
Speaker 1: and the choice and there's always like a kind of
Speaker 1: juicy story but behind the public stage that you're onto
Speaker 1: which events unfold. And I love that kind of story,
Speaker 1: and it can be about anything. We have, you know,
Speaker 1: an investigative story coming pretty soon about the world of
Speaker 1: auctions that I'm incredibly excited about. Yeah. The other side
Speaker 1: of the coin for me as a New Yorkers The Times,
Speaker 1: of course, is the you go through a period in
Speaker 1: your twenties and thirties where you like what The Times
Speaker 1: tells you to like in terms of film and theater
Speaker 1: and so forth, restaurants. I mean The Times as an
Speaker 1: arbiter of culture in this city and beyond like no
Speaker 1: other publication ever. Is that one of the roles you
Speaker 1: play where you have to kind of deal with that,
Speaker 1: where you know The Times has the power to aid
Speaker 1: in a debt certain enterprise here or destroy them. I
Speaker 1: think you know you mentioned restaurant reviews, and I actually
Speaker 1: I shouldn't laugh for the one you had with Guy
Speaker 1: fieria Um, but Frank Bruney when he was our restaurant critic,
Speaker 1: actually because the critics often will go three times to
Speaker 1: a restaurant before they write their reviews, and Frank was
Speaker 1: reviewing a downtown restaurant. Uh. And I went with him
Speaker 1: on his second visit, and I could just tell he did.
Speaker 1: He would never say whether he liked or didn't like
Speaker 1: at that point, but um, at one point in the meal,
Speaker 1: he looked at me and he said, because he was
Speaker 1: tasted what I was having. The peas in your dish
Speaker 1: are camp. And then his review, which was really one
Speaker 1: of the best written things that eviscerated this restaurant. And
Speaker 1: he described in his first visit how he had witnessed
Speaker 1: the Poseidon Adventure of Wine Spill, which just like and
Speaker 1: you know my brain that that restaurant did close short thereafter.
Speaker 1: Maureen came to me once and she said, would you
Speaker 1: like to come with Frank to review a restaurant. She said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put together a quartet of people as you
Speaker 1: and I and Frank and a fourth and she said,
Speaker 1: he and here's how it works to orders for us,
Speaker 1: and he has to be able to taste everything. And
Speaker 1: then and then when we're sitting with Frank, he takes
Speaker 1: me through how it works. He told me how he
Speaker 1: got the job, blah blah blah. And I said to him,
Speaker 1: where do you live? He said, I live on the
Speaker 1: Upper West Side. I said, you're kidding. I said, that's
Speaker 1: the restaurant. Wise, that's the most bankrupt part of Manhattan.
Speaker 1: He said, I know, he goes, but I have to
Speaker 1: live near the park. I have to go running every day.
Speaker 1: He was, I'm meeting lunch and dinner out twenty eight
Speaker 1: out of thirty days out of the month. And it
Speaker 1: was really really a thrill to be with him and
Speaker 1: to have him tell me what he happened for and
Speaker 1: what he was what he was focusing on. But you
Speaker 1: had the thing with Fieri's restaurant, which reminded you of
Speaker 1: the residents the paper has. But if you could say,
Speaker 1: I mean people used to joke, consider that there was
Speaker 1: a you know, a pipeline from Morningside Heights and the
Speaker 1: Columbia School of Journalism to Fort Street, and an argument
Speaker 1: could be made, I suppose I'll live to get your
Speaker 1: opinion about this. Whether The Times was the bastion of
Speaker 1: Ivy League types of men and women, but mostly men
Speaker 1: in the fifties and on into the sixties. And if
Speaker 1: the complexion, if the stripe, if you would the dominant stripe,
Speaker 1: that fabric was Ivy League men for many many years.
Speaker 1: What would you characterize it as. Now, who's coming to
Speaker 1: you for a job and who are you hiring? I mean,
Speaker 1: right now we're hiring you know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: that have digital skills, as we're hiring videographers or technology.
Speaker 1: Percentage of the people working with you now are men
Speaker 1: and how many are women? Women are thirty seven percent.
Speaker 1: You're a woman who's the first person in this job,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering how much of that do you get
Speaker 1: in the sense that people expect you as a woman
Speaker 1: to help lift up that the rising tide of Jill
Speaker 1: Abramson is going to raise all female boats now at
Speaker 1: the time, Well, in part I expect that of myself.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't expect that I can ever raise
Speaker 1: all female boats, but I try to go out of
Speaker 1: my way, not to the exclusion of of men. But
Speaker 1: I do take a particular interest in the careers and
Speaker 1: work of many of the younger women at the time.
Speaker 1: And I'm like open about if anyone has a problem
Speaker 1: with that, too bad. What sympathies do you have for
Speaker 1: Howell Rains today that you didn't have two years ago,
Speaker 1: since you took this job, I have many, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I have sympathy with the fact that he was such.
Speaker 1: He was really a great rioter, and he had lots
Speaker 1: of story ideas and he could see in his mind
Speaker 1: side how he wanted them to come out. On the
Speaker 1: other end, it was very frustrating to him when things
Speaker 1: didn't wind up the way he hoped they were. And uh,
Speaker 1: when I was on the receiving end of that displeasure
Speaker 1: when he think some of the work when I was
Speaker 1: Washington Bureau Chief that was coming from the political correspondence
Speaker 1: in the Washington Correspondence fell short. He seemed sometimes impatient
Speaker 1: and too quick to be angry. But I think my
Speaker 1: sympathy is he had high standards but very little time.
Speaker 1: Your day is so crowded with you know, I'm scheduled
Speaker 1: with not fifteen minutes segments every day, and that, you know,
Speaker 1: can make you irritable when what you most care about
Speaker 1: is the quality of the journalism itself, and you have
Speaker 1: you know, you would think that would be the thing
Speaker 1: you spend all of your time on, but it's not.
Speaker 1: Especially now, would you say, with the financial imperatives, mean
Speaker 1: when the time is from But I think it just
Speaker 1: always there have been, you know, issues from the business
Speaker 1: side of the Times and other things that like take
Speaker 1: your mind away from a focus on what is the
Speaker 1: smartest way, and to guns, sir, any of the things
Speaker 1: we're covering right now. And he seemed too impatient to
Speaker 1: me when I was Washington Bureau Chief and he was
Speaker 1: the boss. And now I completely understand that in a
Speaker 1: way I didn't. As someone who was a great admirer
Speaker 1: of the Times and does depend on the Times for
Speaker 1: the truth, I read the Times cover to cover every
Speaker 1: even in the morning, I read half and I read
Speaker 1: the other half of the night when I'm lying in bed. Well,
Speaker 1: what's the first thing most people read in the Times?
Speaker 1: They tell you the cap shuttings and the front page photos.
Speaker 1: If they're reading the print paper, I go to one
Speaker 1: column first because it's usually the best riding. It's the
Speaker 1: most moving riding, which is the obituaries every morning. It's
Speaker 1: some of the most beautiful. It's incredible. It's the little
Speaker 1: digest bio of someone's life. It's an art. In the
Speaker 1: midst of talking with Jill about her career, I neglected
Speaker 1: to ask her about another important part of her life.
Speaker 1: In May two thousand seven, early one morning, Jill Abramson
Speaker 1: was struck by a truck and nearly killed while crossing
Speaker 1: the street just blocks from the New York Times building.
Speaker 1: So I called her up to find out what kind
Speaker 1: of impact that event had on her. It's Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: calling for Jill Abramson. This is it's you. It's you.
Speaker 1: Well you know we we are calling you. And Abramson
Speaker 1: spent three weeks in Bellevue Hospital with a broken femur
Speaker 1: and a fractured hip. Two years after her accident, she
Speaker 1: took home out a Golden Retriever. She'll be four and April.
Speaker 1: So then wind it back and that's when she came
Speaker 1: into our law. Yeah, two thousand and nine, that feels right. Uh,
Speaker 1: and yeah, she was obviously a tiny thing when we
Speaker 1: first got her. We got her as a puppy. We
Speaker 1: didn't um adopt her. We got her from a breeder.
Speaker 1: And you know, I didn't know it at the time
Speaker 1: that it was you know, my husband was the one
Speaker 1: who pushed hardest, and my two children also for us
Speaker 1: to get a new dog. Are um we we had
Speaker 1: had a dog, a terrier who had passed away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just a little bit before I had my accident, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know it turned out to be, as the cliche says,
Speaker 1: just what the doctor or uh, frankly, I did it
Speaker 1: when I had my my two children, just ridiculously obsessed
Speaker 1: with every aspect of puppy life. And my husband and
Speaker 1: I were at the stage of life where we were
Speaker 1: empty nesters, and you know, I just I think we're
Speaker 1: both built to take care of living things. And you know,
Speaker 1: we found ourselves in you know, puppy kindergarten and you know,
Speaker 1: worrying that that scalt you know, was the worst student
Speaker 1: in the class, which she somewhat was. And I found,
Speaker 1: you know that, especially late at night, walking the dog
Speaker 1: in New York I lived downtown near the Hudson River
Speaker 1: is the best way to kind of get rid of
Speaker 1: whatever anxiety and intention you might have from the day's work.
Speaker 1: And Jill Abramson's work continues every day. Her job is
Speaker 1: to take care that the news coverage of The New
Speaker 1: York Times remains unbiased, and to take care of her
Speaker 1: special friend. She's just a bundle of constant that both
Speaker 1: joy and trouble, as you all no doubt know from
Speaker 1: your experience with with your dogs. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to here's the thing,