N.Y. Times needs to do more to understand the country between the coasts, executive editor says at conference

New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn replies to a question from moderator Evan Smith at the conference in Texas.

The New York Times needs to do more to understand and report on the whole United States, its top editor said Saturday at the 23rd annual International Symposium on Online Journalism in Austin.

"We have too many people on the coasts," Executive Editor Joe Kahn said. "We want to invest more in understanding what's happening around the country."

That includes hiring people from diverse geographies, Kahn added later. "We want to have a newsroom that looks like the country and increasingly like the world," because the Times is a global enterprise, he said. It has 10 million digital subscribers and is aiming for 15 million.

A questioner in the audience at the University of Texas asked how important ideological diversity is to the Times newsroom. "It's very important," Kahn replied, not by asking applicants about their political opinions, but seeking them "from a variety of geographies" where they are exposed to a wider range of views than on the coasts. He mentioned "places like Ohio" and hiring of people from "evangelical backgrounds," as well as military veterans.

Kahn said the Times continues to pursue journalism with a sense of objectivity, but in support of democracy, saying that in a non-democratic system, "The New York Times does not exist. . . . We are on the side of democracy" and against misinformation and manipulation of elections.

He said the paper is "going hard" after threats to democracy, "trying to understand the political motives of a rising class of Republicans," but doesn't want to "preach" about it. "I think we probably contributed to the results we saw in the midterm election," he said. "The people who were the most virulent election deniers tended to lose." He said that was not a motive for the coverage.