The New York Times ‘will not be cowed’

MEREDITH KOPIT LEVIEN: The point of lawsuits or attempts to denigrate the independent press, that I believe is just an abject attempt to deter reporting. And I want to be clear, The New York Times is not going to be cowed. In a time where the big tech platforms that control a lot of the flow of information are sending fewer and fewer people to publishers, to independent journalism outlets like The New York Times, we have among the largest audiences we have ever had. I’m out all over the country. I talk to liberals, I talk to conservatives. The universal thing I hear people believe there needs to be a shared fact base. Plenty of the country wants independent fact-based journalism.

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Meredith Kopit Levien, president and CEO of The New York Times, recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco on October 9th. I wanted to talk to Meredith about what it takes to sustain fact-based media in 2025 in the face of attacks from all corners, including the White House. Meredith talks plainly about the future of The New York Times as a business, how news coverage relates to the Times’ fast-growing lifestyle products, plus the impact of AI as a revenue source and more. It’s an inside look at operating a brand with no peers, but plenty of challenges. A brand that under her leadership has defied financial troubles plaguing other news outlets. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response. 

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All right, Meredith, you ready to play this game?

KOPIT LEVIEN: All right, Bob. Let’s do it.

Copy LinkExpanding The New York Times’ business model

SAFIAN: Okay. So you have led The New York Times through a period of extraordinary transition. I mean, a time that’s been hard for a lot of media companies. You’ve reframed the business in a lot ways, expanding what the brand covers, from games like Wordle to deep sports like The Athletic, lifestyle services, New York Times Cooking and Wirecutter. I mean, you’ve sort of successfully shocked the old Gray Lady into a new era. With all this, has what the New York Times stands for, has it changed, or is this more just about business model?

KOPIT LEVIEN: What a great question. Thanks so much for having me here, and I hope we’ve got lots of readers and watchers and listeners and game players in the room. I would say what you just described is about the business model.

SAFIAN: Is about the business.

KOPIT LEVIEN: And I’ll talk about that. But at the core of what we do, we are covering the most important stories in the world with hardcore news journalism. And we are doing that day in and day out, working all over the world where things are happening to the highest set of professional standards with a sort of level of editing and rigor and quality that I think is getting more rare and valuable. I always say on a list of 10 things that are important at The New York Times, getting that right every day and making sure that that is in service to no one’s interest but the broad public is one through nine.

SAFIAN: But it’s such a tricky proposition. I remember this at Fast Company. Because the stories that we were most proud of and that we put in some ways the most resources against were also the ones that we really lost the most money on. That you made your money in other areas.

KOPIT LEVIEN: I don’t know that I totally buy that premise. Let me tell you, as a business, our job is to do news journalism and have lifestyle products that are so unique and so valuable to people that they seek them out directly and they ask for them by name, and they make room for them in their lives. They form habits with them. And that happens at a scale of tens of millions of people.

And we as a business are aiming to be essential to curious people everywhere who want to understand the world and who want to make the most of their lives and passions. And there’s basically three elements to that in our business: be the world’s best news destination, have leading lifestyle products in really big spaces. You ticked them off, games, sports, recipes, shopping advice where people spend a lot of their passion time, and put that together in interconnected product experience. So whatever is going on in the world or your world, there’s something for you in The New York Times that day. That’s the business, that’s what we’re aiming to do.

SAFIAN: The news work gives credibility, added credibility to all the other things.

KOPIT LEVIEN: No doubt. But let me just say it is also, think about it, there are things happening all over the world that really matter. It is also an enormous generator of audience. It is an enormous generator of sort of engagement and people just coming to the Times to see what they should know today. It’s the thing that imbues the whole place with its sense of authority, and people’s belief that everything we do is to a particular quality standard. And just to challenge your premise a little bit, it is the most economically value creating thing that we do. It is the most value creating thing we do for society, no doubt. But it is also the most economically value creating thing. Because it brings such a big audience.

SAFIAN: When you do things like add games, invest more in games and sports, and all of those things, was there any concern that like, oh, you’re going to undercut this credibility, you’re going to undercut this? I mean, I’m sure you’ve got this question.

KOPIT LEVIEN: Once or twice. Yeah. Look, we want to make the best games that clever people play and want to play with their families, and we want to make more and more of them. We want to be number one at that. We want The Athletic to be a household name for every curious person who is a big sports fan. We want to do nothing but add dimension to their lives. And make no mistake, we are building that to be a leading product. We want Wirecutter to be the best product reviews you can get anywhere. And The New York Times Cooking app is already, I think, it’s the largest paid recipe app there is, and the recipes, we have tens of thousands of recipes. They’re at such a high quality. We want to lead in each of those spaces, and we have no sort of constraint on the level of ambition there.

And even still, I’m going to tell you by far the biggest and most important endeavor we do at The New York Times is cover the most important stories in the world so that people can come to us at great scale, and really just understand what’s happening around them and what really matters. And our ability to do that effectively is what kind of gives us permission, and again, sort of establishes the standard for the way we do everything else.

SAFIAN: So –

KOPIT LEVIEN: Can I say one more thing about it? No doubt, having Wordle and Connections and Strands, now Pips, and I hope everybody’s playing those games, or having a really successful Athletic, our success there no doubt enables us to invest more and more in the hardcore journalism of The New York Times. So that is absolutely the construct.

We won a number of Pulitzer Prizes last year, one, for our coverage of the war in Sudan. It happens to be, I believe, the world’s bloodiest conflict right now. We’re not doing that because we think it’s going to get clicks. We’re not doing that because we think that’s necessarily going to drive the commercial business. We’re doing that because the expectation is The New York Times is going to tell you the most important things that are happening in the world, and people do need to know about it. So that’s how the model works. We are doing that because that is our job. That’s what the world needs to know. And the more people who play Wordle, or find a chicken recipe from us, or like me, are a diehard and frustrated Jets fan who has to get their fix–

SAFIAN: I commiserate with you on that.

KOPIT LEVIEN: –on The Athletic, the more people do that, the more of the other thing we can do.

Copy LinkInside Trump’s $15 billion lawsuit against NYT

SAFIAN: So I have to ask you, as the steward of The New York Times brand, when the president of the United States sues your for $15 billion and calls The New York Times, now I’m going to quote this, “This was one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the history of our country,” how does that impact your business? All of this work that you’re doing to generate trust in the news and the work that you’re doing?

KOPIT LEVIEN: Yeah, yeah. Let me take that in two parts. The lawsuit had no merit. I think you know that. I think you don’t need me to say that. The judge, the judge’s rebuke, I think demonstrated that, how quickly it came and how forceful it was.

The thing that is worth lingering on is, what do we believe is the point of lawsuits like that or name calling or attempts to denigrate the independent press, not just The New York Times?  That I believe is just an abject attempt to deter more high quality independent journalism. To deter reporting, to stop us from what we’re doing. And I want to be clear that The New York Times is not going to be cowed. We’re not going to be stopped by that or anything else. Anything else. As far as, what does it do to our business, and I have to say everywhere, I’m out in the world talking to a lot of people now about what is independent journalism and why it matters.

SAFIAN: When you’re in conflict with the president, it’s hard to continue to be perceived as nonpartisan, which I know you want all your reporting to be perceived as. I mean to be and to be perceived as.

KOPIT LEVIEN: It’s a great question. Let me say it this way: I think, look, we are living in a time of low trust in a tribalized and deeply polarized country where it’s very easy for people, for any of us, to kind of retreat to our ideological place or to get most of our media in a filter bubble. And no doubt the Times takes its lumps from ideological camps and particularly from people who have an entrenched worldview who do not want that worldview challenged. No doubt.

But I want to tell you, I’m out all over the country. I talk to liberals, I talk to conservatives, I talk to leaders. I talk to people who are just living their lives. And the universal thing I hear from people, it gives me hope for the country and for journalism, people believe there needs to be a shared fact base. And how do you get to a shared fact base? You get to a shared fact base through reporting, through independent professional journalism.

So much of media now, we’re living in a world of an abundance of takes. And by the way, some of the takes are great. I listen to a lot of takes or watch them. But abundance of takes, less and less original reporting, number one. Number two, I get upset every time I say this fact, but something like three quarters of all the newspaper journalism jobs in America have gone away in the last 20 years. Which means people do not run into independent journalism kind of at the level of relevance and value to their daily lives. And we are all spending much of our media diet now with affirming algorithms that give us what we already think or just affirm our worldviews.

Independent journalism exists to do something very different from that. It is about reporters who go out into the world with a posture of searching and not knowing and an empty notebook. And the job is to unearth facts that are really important, sourced and verified in multiple ways so that the reporting can be as fair and accurate as possible. There’s just less of that in the country and the world, and lots and lots of people who believe the world really needs that.

And I think, I’m a business leader, not a journalist by profession, I think when you make a product that people at real scale need, you can have a great business. And I want to tell you, in a time where the big tech platforms that control a lot of the flow of information are sending fewer and fewer people to publishers, to independent journalism outlets like The New York Times, even in that time, we have among the largest audiences we have ever had. We have 50 to 100 million people who come to the Times every week and millions more, many millions more, who listen to our podcasts and read our emails. And I could go on and on about how big the audience is. That gives me confidence and hope there are plenty of people, plenty of the country wants independent fact-based journalism.

SAFIAN: What Meredith is saying about her business model is that The New York Times stands for excellence in news and journalism, but also in games and sports and cooking, and that distinctiveness is what fuels the brand’s success. So how is AI impacting that business model today and what might be the impact in the future? We’ll talk about that after the break. Stay with us.

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Before the break, we heard New York Times CEO, Meredith Levien, live at the Masters of Scale Summit, talk about why she isn’t cowed by attacks on the brand and why the Times’ audience is as big as it’s ever been. Now she talks about suing OpenAI and Microsoft, doing an AI licensing deal with Amazon, and why she loves podcasts and audio. Let’s jump back in.

Copy LinkNYT in the age of AI

You mentioned that the tech platforms out here, people are increasingly relying on AI chatbots for their information. It is a risk to branded news outlets and subscriptions like yours because you might get your information from somewhere else. You sued OpenAI and Microsoft for scraping Times content, but you now are getting paid by Amazon for licensing your content for their AI training data. Is AI, is this a potential good business opportunity for the Times in the long run? Does it make it a tougher business? Or is it too soon to even know where that’s going to land for you?

KOPIT LEVIEN: I’m going to do better than just say yes to all that, or maybe yes to all that. Let me say a few things. First, I would regard the fact that we have sued OpenAI and Microsoft and that we have done a deal with Amazon for the full scope of AI, working with our content in AI for news, The Athletic, and cooking, I’d regard those things as “of a piece.” We are both enforcing our rights through the legal system, and we’ll do that as is necessary, and demonstrating that there is a clear market for deals here where you can have fair value exchange in a sustainable way.

SAFIAN: And you feel like your content will be distinguishable in a premium way the way it is now.

KOPIT LEVIEN: Now, let me say this, I just told you how much audience comes to The New York Times. I am certain that what we do, and by the way, we’re not the only ones doing it, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Reuters, the AP, that work is only getting more rare and more valuable. We have an ungodly amount of copywritten stuff we’ve done for 174 years, and we produce hundreds, every single day, we produce hundreds of news stories and pictures. And that work is done to a professional standard. These companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars, in some cases billions, on power and compute and talent. And we believe they should also be paying for the work that underpins their models. That’s what’s at issue here.

Now, I can’t say that without also saying The Times has a really good track record through lots of different eras of using the most advanced technology to make our reporting richer and our products better, and to get that work to so many more people. I’m a runner. I ran this morning. I listened to a lot of The New York Times now in our, what is, I think, our third generation of an automated voice, and she sounds like a real human being reading it to you.

When the Sydney Sweeney ad came out, we actually, our journalists used AI to debunk a sort of common narrative that the left was up in arms, that that’s sort of where that started. We used AI, say, actually this started as a sort of narrative on the right and then moved across a wider group of people. So we are really optimistic that AI, if used lawfully, if produced lawfully, can be a force multiplier to the 3,000 journalists and content makers at The New York Times to make the work richer, get it out to more people, and like every other business, find the things that are not the main idea of what we do, find ways to do them more efficiently.

SAFIAN: And the way that AI companies are spending billions on chips now, they should be spending that on the other input that’s necessary for them.

KOPIT LEVIEN: Listen, this is an ecosystem. And for those models to continue to be great, they’re going to need great information. It all works together. And so what we are fighting for, and really trying to make sure the public understands, is there has got to be sustainable fair value exchange for high quality journalism. And by the way, also for entertainment, for anything that is creative intellectual property, there’s got to be a business model for it. And if there isn’t, the models aren’t going to work either over time because there isn’t the great information to actually have to surface from.

Copy LinkHow podcasts and audio are redefining audience engagement

SAFIAN: You mentioned the audio products that you use at The New York Times, and since Masters of Scale at its core has been an audio product, has been a podcast, and I host a podcast, what role do podcasts play and audio play in your business strategy?

KOPIT LEVIEN: Yeah, let me say three quick things about it. One, strategically, this is about getting people understanding, harnessing the 2,000 people I just described to you who work on news journalism broadly to find The New York Times saying how do we get information to people? How do we take the world’s most interesting or important stories and get it to people in a way where it’s interesting and compelling? And in some instances, I think audio is very intimate, where just people can take in the information and really feel connected to it. So that’s the first thing to say.

The second thing to say is, I think nine years ago now, we launched The Daily. And what was The Daily? It was not, I’m going to read you the headlines. The insight behind The Daily is we have this giant newsroom at The New York Times, and if we can plumb that newsroom for what was the most important thing that happened yesterday or in recent weeks that people should really know about, and then deliver it to you in a way that almost feels like Michael Barbaro is your friend and he’s explaining the news to you, that will really open up a whole new audience and engagement pattern for the Times. And it has done that.

And now, camera pan, nine years later in American politics, we have the Ezra Klein Show, which is exploring the biggest ideas on the left, and we have the Ross Douthat show, Interesting Times, which is exploring and hosting the biggest ideas and kind of idea makers on the right. And we have Modern Love. We’ve got Hard Fork with Kevin Roose and Casey Newton. Really, really, really high quality journalism, but delivered in a fresh format that maybe gets you the information in an even more compelling way and brings new people in to say, oh yeah, this is for me.

And so to us, podcasts, audio, shows, video, it’s just all about, I always say we’re not in the newspaper business, we’re in the understanding business. And in some instances with what we’re doing, we might even be entertaining you as we do that. We are in the business of getting you really, really high quality information that helps you understand the world and live a better life.

SAFIAN: Well, Meredith, I want to say, as a journalist myself, I very much appreciate that you are showing and demonstrating that the work that my colleagues and I do is something that can be valued and can be sustainable in our business world and is worth investing in. And thank you so much and thanks for being here.

KOPIT LEVIEN: Thanks for having me. It was fun to be here. So good to be here.

SAFIAN: Thank you. I am, of course, gratified and reassured that Meredith is a believer in podcasts. Our goal with Rapid Response has always been to let you hear directly from business leaders on the front lines. And Meredith is certainly on those front lines, adapting to a shifting media landscape, battling to defend the value of the content her colleagues create, whether that’s standing up to harsh words from President Trump or standing up to data scraping by OpenAI and Microsoft.

Meredith mentioned the word trust a couple of times, and that’s really at the core of her strategy and her business, building trust in the facts her journalists produce, but also building trust in anything that Times produces that it will be of premium quality, whether it’s a new game like Pips or a podcast on Modern Love. We’ll be sharing more of our own distinctive premium content at Rapid Response every Tuesday and Friday, including more great conversations from this year’s Masters of Scale Summit about AI in the workplace with leaders from LinkedIn, Meta, and Box, about what it takes to lead a successful turnaround with the commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League, plus the CEOs of Chobani and Patagonia and more, I hope you’ll join us. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.