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      Nicholas Kristof Leaves The New York Times as He Weighs Political Bid

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      Mr. Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is weighing a run for governor of Oregon, the state where he grew up.After 37 years at The New York Times as a reporter, high-level editor and opinion columnist, Nicholas Kristof is leaving the newspaper as he considers running for governor of Oregon, a top Times editor said in a note to the staff on Thursday.Mr. Kristof, 62, has been on leave from The Times since June, when he told company executives that he was weighing a run for governor in the state where he grew up. On Tuesday, he filed to organize a candidate committee with Oregon’s secretary of state, signaling that his interest was serious.In the email to the staff announcing his departure, Kathleen Kingsbury, The Times’s opinion editor, wrote that Mr. Kristof had redefined the role of opinion columnist and credited him with “elevating the journalistic form to a new height of public service with a mix of incisive reporting, profound empathy and a determination to bear witness to those struggling and suffering across the globe.”Mr. Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, joined The Times in 1984 as a reporter and later became an associate managing editor, responsible for the Sunday editions. He started his column in 2001.“This has been my dream job, even with malaria, a plane crash in Congo and periodic arrests abroad for committing journalism,” Mr. Kristof said in a statement included in the note announcing his departure. “Yet here I am, resigning — very reluctantly.”In July, Mr. Kristof, who grew up on a sheep and cherry farm in Yamhill, Ore., said in a statement that friends were recruiting him to succeed Kate Brown, a Democrat, who has been Oregon’s governor since 2015 and is prevented from running again by the state law.“Nick is one of the finest journalists of his generation,” A.G. Sulzberger, The Times’s publisher, said in a statement. “As a reporter and columnist he has long embodied the best values of our profession. He is as empathetic as he is fearless. He is as open-minded as he is principled. He didn’t just bear witness, he forced attention to issues and people that others were all too comfortable ignoring.”As part of the announcement, Ms. Kingsbury noted that Mr. Kristof had been on leave from his column in accordance with Times guidelines, which forbid participation in many aspects of public life. “Journalists have no place on the playing fields of politics,” the handbook states.Mr. Kristof, a former Beijing bureau chief, won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1990, for international reporting, an award he shared with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, a former reporter, for their coverage of the protests at Tiananmen Square and the crackdown by China’s military. The second, in 2006, recognized his columns on the Darfur conflict in Sudan, which the International Criminal Court has classified as a genocide.Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn have written several books together. The most recent, “Tightrope,” published last year, examines the lives of people in Yamhill, a once-prosperous blue-collar town that went into decline when jobs disappeared and poverty, drug addiction and suicides were on the rise.“I’ve gotten to know presidents and tyrants, Nobel laureates and warlords, while visiting 160 countries,” Mr. Kristof said in his statement on Thursday. “And precisely because I have a great job, outstanding editors and the best readers, I may be an idiot to leave. But you all know how much I love Oregon, and how much I’ve been seared by the suffering of old friends there. So I’ve reluctantly concluded that I should try not only to expose problems but also see if I can fix them directly.” More

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      Mueller Scrutinized an Unidentified Member of News Media in Russia Inquiry

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      The scrutiny was one of several new disclosures the Justice Department made about investigative actions involving the news media during the Trump years.WASHINGTON — The special counsel who investigated Russia’s 2016 election interference, Robert S. Mueller III, scrutinized “a member of the news media suspected of participating in the conspiracy” to hack Democrats and make their emails public, the Justice Department disclosed on Wednesday.The deputy attorney general at the time, Rod J. Rosenstein, who was overseeing the Russia investigation, approved a subpoena in 2018 for the unnamed person’s phone and email records. He also approved seeking a voluntary interview with that person and then issuing a subpoena to force the person to testify before a grand jury, the department said.“All of this information was necessary to further the investigation of whether the member of the news media was involved in the conspiracy to unlawfully obtain and utilize the information from the hacked political party or other victims,” the department said.No member of the news media was charged with conspiring in the hack-and-dump operation, and the disclosure on Wednesday left many questions unanswered.It did not say why the person was suspected of participating in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election, or whether that person ever testified before a grand jury.Nor did it define “member of the news media” to clarify whether that narrowly meant a traditional journalist or could broadly extend to various types of commentators on current events. (For example, it has been known since September 2018 that Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theorist and political commentator, was subpoenaed that year.)A Justice Department spokesman declined to provide further clarity, and several former law enforcement officials who were familiar with the Mueller investigation did not respond to requests for information.The disclosure of the scrutiny of a member of the news media was contained in a revision to a report issued by the Trump administration about investigative activities that affected or involved the news media in 2018. The Trump-era version of that report had omitted the episode.The Justice Department under President Biden also issued reports on Wednesday covering such investigative activities in 2019, which the Trump-era department failed to issue, and in 2020. And it provided new details about leak investigations at the end of the Trump administration that sought records for reporters with CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times.The report for 2019 disclosed another investigative matter apparently related to the special counsel’s office, which by then had issued its final report and closed down. During the prosecution of one of the people who was charged with “obstructing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,” a U.S. attorney authorized subpoenaing an unnamed member of the news media for testimony, and that person agreed to comply.Prosecutors, however, ultimately did not call that person to testify at the trial. The report did not say whether any subpoena was issued, or whether obtaining one was merely approved. Nor did it say what the person would have testified about.It also did not say whether it was referring to the trial of Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longtime friend, which took place in 2019. Mr. Stone was charged, among other things, with obstructing one of Congress’s Russia investigations; he was convicted, but then pardoned by Mr. Trump.The 2019 report also glancingly discussed two previously unknown episodes in which the Justice Department investigated members of the news media for “offenses arising from news gathering activities” without saying what those allegations were.One section of the report briefly discussed an investigation into one member of the news media for such offenses. It said the attorney general had authorized prosecutors to use various legal tools to force companies to turn over communications and business records about the target. (The report did not name the attorney general; President Donald J. Trump appointed William P. Barr to the post in February 2019.)In that case, the report said, investigators used a “filter team” in an effort “to minimize the review of news media-related materials and safeguard any such materials.”Another section of the 2019 report discussed an investigation into “employees of a news media entity” for such offenses. It said the attorney general had authorized investigators to conduct voluntary interviews of “two members of the news media employed by a media entity” in connection with the matter, but provided no further details.In contrast to those sparse accounts, the Justice Department also released a detailed timeline of the leak investigations late in the Trump era into sources for reporters with CNN, The Post and The Times, all of which spilled over into the Mr. Biden’s presidency and which the Biden administration disclosed earlier this year.The leak investigations involving CNN, The Times and The Post were opened in August 2017, both involving stories published or aired in preceding months. The chronology did not explain why three years later, there was a sudden urgency to go after the reporters’ communications records.Mr. Barr approved requests to try to obtain a CNN reporter’s communications records in May 2020, the chronology shows. He approved going after the Times reporters’ materials in September 2020. And on Nov. 13, after Mr. Trump lost the presidential election, Mr. Barr approved a request to try to obtain the Post reporters’ communications records.The Justice Department successfully obtained call data — records showing who called whom and when, but not what was said — for the reporters at the three organizations. The chronology said the phone companies had been legally free to reveal that they had received subpoenas, although none did.While the department ultimately obtained some email records for a CNN reporter, Barbara Starr, it did not succeed in getting email records for the Times and Post reporters whose stories were under scrutiny. The Biden-era department ultimately dropped those efforts.Still, the fight over those materials — including the imposition of gag orders on some news media executives, and a delay in notifying the reporters that their materials had been sought and in some cases obtained — spilled over into the Biden administration. The chronology showed that in April Attorney General Merrick B. Garland approved extending a delay in notifying Ms. Starr about the matter.In July, at the direction of Mr. Biden, Mr. Garland barred prosecutors and F.B.I. agents from using subpoenas, search warrants and other tools of legal compulsion to go after reporters’ communications records or force them to testify about confidential sources — a major change in Justice Department policy from practices under recent previous administrations of both parties.At the request of Mr. Garland — who also ordered the production of the timelines — the Justice Department inspector general has opened an investigation into the decision by federal prosecutors to secretly seize the data of reporters, as well as communications records of House Democrats and staff members swept up in leak investigations. More

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      The media is lambasting Biden over Afghanistan. But he should stand firm | Bhaskar Sunkara

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      OpinionUS newsThe media is lambasting Biden over Afghanistan. He should stand firmBhaskar SunkaraThe president was right to withdraw the US from Afghanistan – and he’s being skewered for it

      I served with Nato in Afghanistan – it was a bloated mess
      Sun 29 Aug 2021 08.11 EDTLast modified on Sun 29 Aug 2021 08.12 EDTWhen Joe Biden, a conventional politician if there ever was one, said he was concluding the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan this month, in line with plans set in motion by the Trump administration, the response from the mainstream press was hostile. Following the Taliban takeover of the country, the tenor has only grown more hyperbolic.Joe Biden says new Kabul terror attack highly likely in next 24 to 36 hoursRead moreDuring the Trump years, publications like the New York Times and Washington Post presented themselves as the last defenses of freedom against creeping authoritarianism. The latter adopted a new slogan, “Democracy dies in darkness”, and spent millions on a Super Bowl ad featuring Tom Hanks extolling the importance of journalism as a profession.But for all this talk of “defending freedom”, the mainstream media has a history of reflexively defending militarism, foreign interventions and occupations. Biden – who dared fulfil a campaign promise and end America’s longest war – is learning this the hard way.As Eric Levitz recounts in New York Magazine, the media has created a public backlash against Biden, with outlets like the Times calling the withdrawal a humiliating fiasco. For the New York Times Editorial Board, the two-decade occupation of Afghanistan is described as a “nation-building project” that reflected “the enduring American faith in the values of freedom and democracy”.Key to the media narrative is the echoing of “experts” on Afghanistan like former ambassador Ryan C Crocker, who wishes in another Times op-ed that instead of bolting after a couple of decades, US troops might have remained in Afghanistan for more than a half-century, as we’ve done on the Korean peninsula. Crocker regrets that “Mr Biden’s decision to withdraw all US forces destroyed an affordable status quo that could have lasted indefinitely at a minimum cost in blood and treasure”.But as the writer Jeet Heer points out, the status quo was far from “affordable” for ordinary Afghans. The tragic figure of more than 2,000 dead US troops pales in comparison to the more than 200,000 Afghans killed since 2001. Indeed, prolonged civil war has put this year on pace to be the bloodiest for civilians as a failed US client state has overseen plummeting social indicators, widespread corruption and a total breakdown in public safety.The media had ignored the mounting chaos for years, only to laser-focus on it as a means to criticize Biden. They’ve ignored their own role in cheerleading a misguided “War on Terror” and pinned the blame for two decades of imperial hubris on the president who finally made good on promises to leave the country against the wishes of even some in his own party.What’s underlying much of the approach is a mainstream media fidelity to “expert” consensus. Many who presented themselves as fierce truth-tellers in the face of Trump hold the opinions of former intelligence and military officials in higher regard than that of a president democratically elected by 81.3 million people and pursuing a policy supported by 70% of Americans.Not only are corporate media pundits and talking heads wrong to advocate staying in Afghanistan, they’ve been wrong about generations of conflicts that ordinary people have opposed. Contrary to the popular imagination, opposition to wars from Vietnam to Iraq were spearheaded by workers, not the rich and the professional classes that serve them. It’s this general aversion to costly overseas conflict that the president should confidently embrace.Biden has never been a very good populist. For all his “Amtrak Joe” pretenses, he’s a creature of the Beltway, the ultimate establishment politician. It’s no surprise that his administration appears paralyzed in the face of criticism from its erstwhile elite allies. But unless he manages to push back against the narratives mounting against his administration, he’ll risk undermining his popular domestic agenda as well.Joe Biden did something good – and the media want to kill him for it. He should embrace their scorn and defend his actions to the American people.
      Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin magazine and a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality
      TopicsUS newsOpinionJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsUS press and publishingNew York TimesWashington PostcommentReuse this content More

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      Reporter Discusses False Accusations Against Dominion Worker

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      Through one employee of Dominion Voting Systems, a Times Magazine article examines the damage that false accusations can inflict.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.As Susan Dominus, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, approached her reporting for an article on the attacks on Dominion Voting Systems, a business that supplies election technology, she wanted to tell the story of one of the Dominion employees who was being vilified by supporters of President Trump.She zeroed in on one man: Eric Coomer, whose anti-Trump social media posts were used to bolster false allegations that Dominion had tampered with the election, leading to death threats. Her article, published on Tuesday, is a case study in what can happen when information gets wildly manipulated. In an edited interview, Ms. Dominus discussed what she learned.How did you come upon Eric Coomer — did you have him in mind all along? Or did you want to do something on Dominion and eventually found your way to him?The Magazine was interested in pursuing a story about how the attacks on Dominion Voting Systems — a private business — were dramatically influencing the lives of those who worked there, people who were far from public figures. Many employees there were having their private information exposed, but early on, a lot of the threats were focusing on Eric Coomer, who was then the director of product strategy and security at Dominion. Eventually, people such as the lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and the president’s son Eric Trump were naming him in the context of accusations about Dominion fixing the election.What was the biggest surprise you came across in your reporting?I was genuinely surprised to find that Mr. Coomer had expressed strong anti-Trump sentiments, using strong language, on his Facebook page. His settings were such that only his Facebook friends could see it, but someone took a screenshot of those and other divisive posts, and right-wing media circulated them widely. The posts were used in the spread of what cybersecurity experts call malinformation — something true that is used to support the dissemination of a story that is false. In this case, it was the big lie that the election was rigged. I think to understand the spread of spurious information — to resist its lure, to fight it off — these distinctions are helpful to parse. Understanding the human cost of these campaigns also matters. We heard a lot about the attacks on Dominion, but there are real people with real lives who are being battered in a battle they had no intention of joining, whatever their private opinions.There were so many elaborate theories of election fraud involving Dominion. How important were the accusations against Eric Coomer in that bigger story?It’s hard to say. But Advance Democracy Inc., a nonpartisan nonprofit, looked at the tweets in its database from QAnon-related accounts and found that, from Nov. 1 to Jan. 7, Eric Coomer’s name appeared in 25 percent of the ones that mentioned Dominion. Coomer believes the attacks on Dominion were somewhat inevitable but considered his own role as “an accelerant.”Trump’s Bid to Subvert the ElectionCard 1 of 4A monthslong campaign. More

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      For One Times Reporter, the Campaign Trail Kept Going

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      The Times political correspondent Katie Glueck discusses covering two intense races: the presidency and the New York City Democratic primary for mayor.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Katie Glueck, the chief Metro political correspondent for The New York Times, is used to juggling multiple deadlines in one day. That can simply be part of the job when you cover more than a dozen major candidates in New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor, which was called in favor of Eric L. Adams on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.But Ms. Glueck is no stranger to elections. Before this race, she was the lead reporter covering Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential campaign, an 18-month marathon. (She switched to her Metro assignment in January.) Ms. Glueck recently discussed how covering the mayoral race stacks up against covering a presidential election — and how she manages to stay on top of the news when she isn’t breaking it herself.How does covering a mayoral race compare with covering a presidential one?Covering a presidential campaign, in nonpandemic circumstances, involves far-flung travel. But New York is incredibly diverse, so with the mayoral campaign, I’m also reporting from all kinds of different places, even if the geographic area is smaller. Also, when you’re covering the mayor’s race, you often get more access to the candidates. As I recall, Mr. Biden was willing to help voters stay in touch with him and his team, and happily hopped on the phone with a given voter’s relative — but unlike the mayoral candidates, he was less likely to jump on his cellphone to chat with the reporters covering him, though we tried to talk with him every chance we got.Which race were people more passionate about?The presidential one, initially. Especially in the Democratic primary, when the focus was on who could defeat Donald Trump. With the mayor’s race, it understandably took some voters longer to engage with a race that began amid the throes of the pandemic — but those who did, often did so because they realized just how incredibly consequential the contest was for the future of the city. What challenges did the pandemic present for your reporting?The mayor’s race, for many months, was conducted largely over Zoom, which, at first, made it more difficult to understand what messages most resonated with the electorate. Luckily, the mayor’s race took on more of the feeling of a traditional race toward the end, when the candidates were out more consistently and we could see them engaging more frequently with voters.Why did you become a political reporter?I love covering American politics, whether it’s talking with voters about what motivates them, or capturing how political figures — often with larger-than-life personalities — are battling to win them over. It’s a real privilege to try to assess the mood of the country or the city, whether on a presidential or mayoral level. Both kinds of races have major implications for the daily lives of Americans, and we take the responsibility of trying to get the story right very seriously. On a lighter note, New York politics is raucous, unpredictable and so much fun. At the presidential level, you get to see different parts of the country and meet fascinating political characters — and consult with your colleagues on must-visit restaurants wherever you’ve landed.How do you keep up with all the news on the campaign trail?Of course, I read what my colleagues are writing, as well as what our competitors are up to, a little bit nervously. Watching NY1 is vital at the city level. And I spend some time on Twitter — I’m not even the most prolific tweeter, I’m just watching!You’ve published more than 600 articles over the past two years, according to The New York Times’s archives. Are you able to take days off?It’s a seven-days-a-week kind of job during campaign season, in both cases. During campaigns, the candidates want to be out talking to voters, and they often need to do that on Saturdays. You don’t get a lot of sleep — my coffee habit has been a serious addiction since I was a teenager, and it has only intensified in the years since. Once the primary is over, I’m hoping to escape for a quick vacation. After covering the presidential campaign, I have lots of Marriott points to use!Anywhere specific in mind?My husband and I took a couple of very cold road trips last year: We went to Maine in November, which was beautiful, if freezing, and to a very cold beach in December. I’m hoping after this primary I can go to a beach when it’s warm. More

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      The Trump Books Are Coming. Cue the War of the Excerpts.

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      As a handful of authors compete to recount President Donald J. Trump’s last year in office, Twitter is strewn with vividly reported snapshots of a monumental year in American history.WASHINGTON — The capital was just beginning to quiet down for the summer when the buzz over the books began: Several seeking to explain the final year of Donald J. Trump’s presidency are landing so closely together over the next month that publishers have hastily changed publication days to avoid mid-scoop collisions.It’s enough to give an author nightmares.“I literally just wake up every day waiting to find out that someone else has jumped in front of us, and some book that I had no idea was coming is going to be announced,” Michael C. Bender, the author of “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” said in an interview.Really, it is not the most unfounded fear. Mr. Bender is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. “Frankly,” his first book, will be published on July 13. But he fast-tracked its publication, originally slated for August, after his publisher snooped on Amazon and uncovered the release dates of two other Trump-related books this summer: “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” by Michael Wolff, and “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters at The Washington Post.What has ensued is a war of excerpts among writers who are realizing their juiciest material may not hold. Twitter is now strewn with the most unsettling moments from Mr. Trump’s last year in office. Vividly reported snapshots of a monumental year in American history are proliferating like cicada shells on city pavement.Mr. Bender’s book, in excerpts shared with CNN, Vanity Fair, Axios, The Daily Mail and others, lays bare the leadership failures of Mr. Trump and his team. “Frankly” is full of expletive-laden interactions, including one particularly colorful exchange between Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Mr. Trump’s immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, over the protests that roiled the country last summer.The drip-drip of material is the extreme version of a commonplace promotion strategy, intended to get Mr. Bender, a lesser-known writer than some of his competitors, maximum publicity. But others seeking to claim their territory are aggressively following suit: Jonathan Karl of ABC News, whose book does not come out until later this year, published his own excerpt in recent days in The Atlantic.David Kuhn, a literary agent at Aevitas Creative Management, said the cascade of Trump books could end up “cannibalizing each other.”“There’s so many different planets that have to align for a book to truly break out,” he said.But the reporters are betting frequent promotion in a crowded market will improve their fortunes.An excerpt from Michael Wolff’s “Landslide,” which will be published on July 27, is the cover story for New York magazine, and outlines a scene in which Mr. Trump told his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that he “didn’t mean it literally” that his supporters should march to the Capitol on Jan. 6.And more details of Mr. Trump’s illness from the coronavirus were shared before the publication on Tuesday of “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” by Damian Paletta and Yasmeen Abutaleb, journalists for The Post.Mr. Trump has invited some of the authors of books on his presidency to Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., more than once.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesIn their book, Mr. Paletta and Ms. Abutaleb present gripping evidence that Mr. Trump received a strong cocktail of drugs — “Trump’s doctors threw everything they could at the virus all at once,” they write. Robert R. Redfield, then the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had prayed that a serious bout with the coronavirus would change Mr. Trump’s response to the pandemic. It did not.“Nightmare Scenario” is focused on the federal government’s handling of the coronavirus — Ms. Abutaleb and Mr. Paletta do not examine the events of Jan. 6, for instance, and they did not interview Mr. Trump. Still, so many reporters covering the same material at the same time made for a crowded reporting process.“We definitely would hear from sources that they had gotten calls from other reporters,” Mr. Paletta said in an interview. “That was quite intimidating for us.”Some of the more decorated reporters in Washington’s press corps have chosen silence as a strategy as they complete books scheduled to be published this year.Little is known about when Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post may publish their book on Mr. Trump’s final days, but the best guess from agents and authors alike is that it will be in September. (Neither author replied to requests for comment.)The list of summer releases does not include titles coming next year from reporters for The New York Times. Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, is working on a definitive account of the Trump presidency with his wife, Susan Glasser of The New Yorker. Maggie Haberman, a former Trump White House reporter and current Washington correspondent for The Times, is also working on a book about Mr. Trump. Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, national political correspondents, are writing a book on the presidential race between Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Jeremy Peters, who covers the Republican Party for The Times, is working on a book that assesses the G.O.P.’s attempts to wrangle Mr. Trump.Mark Leibovich, a political correspondent for The Times, is working on a sequel to “This Town,” a book on Washington culture, that will touch on the Trump era.At the center of the publishing frenzy is the subject himself. Aware of the barrage of books about his presidency and lacking a book deal that could give his grievances another formal platform, Mr. Trump has tried a charm offensive. He has invited some writers to Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., more than once, serving them steak and seating them in his estate’s great room, where the visiting journalists can be part of the political pageant that happens there each night.Mr. Trump, who keenly understands his own place in the news media ecosystem, has turned down only a few interview requests, including one from Mr. Woodward. Mr. Woodward’s 2020 book, “Rage,” included several interviews with Mr. Trump, who told Mr. Woodward he had downplayed the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.But Mr. Trump has quizzed other visiting journalists on the people they are talking to, the questions they are going to ask and the stories they plan to tell about his presidency.“We were really surprised by how much time he spent talking to us,” Mr. Rucker said. “And by, frankly, how interested he was in our book and the subjects we were covering. He very much wanted to be a part of trying to shape the historical narrative of his presidency.”(Given Mr. Trump’s history with reading books — he does not read them — Mr. Rucker does not expect that the former president will provide a full review.)As Mr. Bender readied another excerpt for publication — this time detailing the long-running animosity that existed between Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s counselor, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — he said Tuesday evening that the breakneck pace with which he has written and promoted his book mirrored the hectic nature of four years on the Trump beat.“When this is all done I want to ask my publisher how this is supposed to work,” Mr. Bender said. “Nothing about this has felt normal. Which is kind of the experience of covering Donald Trump in a nutshell.” More

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      Behind One New York Times Pulitzer: Hundreds of Journalists

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      When The New York Times was honored with the prestigious prize in the category of public service for its coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, it reflected the contributions of the entire newsroom.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.This month, from a steep red staircase overlooking The New York Times’s newsroom, Dean Baquet, the executive editor, announced that the staff had won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for its coverage of the coronavirus.The Times, which has received 132 Pulitzers since they were first awarded in 1917, has won in the public service category, regarded as the most prestigious of the prizes, six times. Wesley Morris, a Times critic at large, also received a Pulitzer, his second, for criticism for his writing on the intersection of race and culture in America.The Pulitzer board recognized several facets of the coronavirus coverage. The Times reported early on the outbreak in China in January 2020. Tracked cases across the nation and the world through an intensive data project. Relayed developments 24 hours a day. Reported on the race to understand the virus and the failure of governments to respond. Documented racial and social inequities of the pandemic. Provided vivid accounts of suffering worldwide. And observed the monumental death toll.That coverage encompassed not just articles but graphics, video, data journalism, design, photography and podcasting. The effort drew upon the full resources of the newsroom, with many staff members putting themselves at personal risk and others taking on new roles to meet the demands of the coverage or provide support. And all of it was executed with nearly all employees working remotely and as The Times also covered the nation’s racial unrest, the impact of climate change and a tumultuous presidential campaign and election.Speaking to employees, many of whom were watching the livestreamed awards ceremony at home, Mr. Baquet, along with other newsroom leaders, reflected on what it meant to be honored at this time.“I just want to pause for a moment on the full power of these prizes and what they say about what you accomplished in a year when many of you suffered from your own loss and disruption,” he said. “Literally, hundreds of people had a hand in this coverage.”A key component of the coverage was a tracking project that compiled virus data on a variety of measures. The Times released the data, which has been used by medical researchers and government officials.More than 100 people from across the newsroom, as well as 50 freelancers and students, have worked on the tracking effort. Reporters and researchers filed more than 700 public records requests for data on populations like nursing homes and prisons. Engineers created a database to manage hundreds of data sources.The team has now published more than 3,000 daily tracking pages, covering subjects that include country, state and county trends, reopenings and vaccinations.“It was easily the largest and probably the most ambitious data project our newsroom has ever taken on,” Archie Tse, the graphics director, said.At the same time, the National desk helped reveal the disproportionate toll that the virus took on people of color. And when the overall U.S. death toll reached 100,000 people, a team of journalists marked the staggering figure with a front page consisting of victims’ names and biographical details.“We strove every day not to be so focused on the numbers that we forgot the people behind them,” said Marc Lacey, an assistant managing editor and the former National editor.On the Health and Science desk, journalists followed the efforts to explain how the virus spread, its effect on the body and the development of a vaccine. Members of the desk edited more than 1,100 online articles on the virus and assisted other journalists in the newsroom on hundreds more.“We covered Ebola and Zika, but none of us had ever experienced such a ravenous hunger for science news,” said Celia Dugger, the Health and Science editor.Some of the earliest work began with the International desk, which reported from the front lines in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak first emerged, then charted the failures in Italy and later examined the impact of the virus all over the world.The desk also was instrumental in the live briefing on the virus, a constantly updated news feed that would go on to involve multiple departments in the newsroom and that remains a staple of the coverage, more than 500 days later. Chris Buckley, a Times correspondent previously based in China, was on a train on his way to cover the lockdown in Wuhan in January 2020 when his editor called him and asked him to start writing for the live briefing. At the time, Mr. Buckley was skeptical: “Live briefing? About this story? From a train? So, that call was one of those reminders that sometimes our editors are actually right,” he said, joking.“Since then our coverage of Covid has never stopped.”Many of the leaders and staff members who played critical roles in the two Pulitzer Prizes this year gathered for the ceremony.Damon Winter/The New York Times More