Episode
Interview Only w/ Carolyn Ryan - The New York Times & The Fight For Independent Journalism
- Podcast
- The Chuck ToddCast
- Published
- Jul 6, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4008
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
Carolyn Ryan — deputy managing editor of The New York Times — joins the Chuck Toddcast for a candid conversation about the state of American journalism at a moment when the Times has become, as Ryan puts it, one of the last big independent organizations left in news. Ryan makes the case that serious journalism has become almost impossible without the resources the Times can still muster — deep-dive reporting requires enormous time, the best legal team in the business to withstand the threats and lawsuits now routinely aimed at the press, and an ownership structure insulated from market pressure. She's blunt about the difference the Ochs-Sulzberger family makes: newsrooms owned by publicly traded companies inevitably change their behavior to satisfy shareholders, while the family that controls the Times is, in her words, "ride or die" for journalism — a distinction that has never mattered more than it does now, even as she praises the excellent nonprofit newsrooms springing up around the country. Ryan explains how the Times is building regional reporting hubs and investing heavily in places like Texas on the theory that a truly national news organization needs a journalist in every state, why book reporting from stars like Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan often lands with more impact and candor than day-to-day breaking news, and how the paper decides which reporters get the coveted book leave that produces those deeper stories. The conversation gets into the harder editorial questions facing the Times in the Trump era. Ryan discusses the paper's major investment in a more rigorous polling and data operation , its aggressive push into video to reach younger audiences, and the perennial tension over whether there should be a brighter line between…