New New York Times culture section edges toward video

<p><img src="https://img.semafor.com/bf2cb85160ec662983831d458fcd03ca74d316e6-3177x2…; alt="bf2cb85160ec662983831d458fcd03ca74d316e6"></p><div><p>The Times is clearly in the midst of rethinking its critical voice. In June, the paper announced that it had hired two food critics to fill the chief restaurant critic role vacated by Pete Wells. The new critics had a broader remit than Wells, reviewing restaurants outside of New York City and producing short-form video reviews for social media.</p><p>On the newspaper’s opinion side, the paper has experimented with its editorial board endorsement process, avoiding endorsing a candidate in the New York mayor’s race and instead bringing in a panel of local voices to sound off on each mayoral prospect. It has also turned many of its high-profile opinion writers into podcasters and on-camera talent for YouTube and the Times’ own apps.</p><p>All this suggests a shift from text-based reviews to more personal, video-driven tastemaking for the TikTok age. The paper’s leadership believes that criticism looks very different in a media environment where some of the most influential critics and tastemakers shape the public’s opinions via video, podcasting, and social media. It’s a bet that the Times’ current critical authority could be limited in a world with shorter attention spans and growing appetites for opinions to be offered in multiple formats. The Times’ restaurant critics are already experimenting with this, as is the paper’s pop music section, whose short-form video essays have repeatedly gone viral.</p><p>But the abruptness of the changes spooked longtime staff, who understandably recoiled at the implication that critics are the same as regular beat reporters. Kahn’s suggestion that they should be reshuffled in a similar manner seemed to overlook the specialization of those jobs. The paper’s critics hold those roles for years, deepening their authority in their zones of expertise.</p><p>Among Times’ culture staff, the recent reassignments also raised some questions about Kahn’s personal taste. The decision to reassign Woolfe, the paper’s classical music critic, came less than a year after Woolfe was publicly admonished for his criticism by the head of the New York Metropolitan Opera, where Kahn is a <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/peter-gelb-metropolitan-opera-p…; presence. A senior Times staffer dismissed the idea that external criticism had any influence over the decision to reassign Woolfe or other critics.</p><p>Regardless of why the paper chose those four critics, the move showed how Kahn has continued to push back against a newsroom that hasn’t been afraid to voice its displeasure at controversial moves by management.</p><p>Since ascending to the top job in 2022, Kahn has not been shy about criticizing what he has seen as complacency or oversensitivity within his own newsroom. He irked younger staff when he <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/05/05/2024/joe-kahn-the-newsroom-is-not…; to Semafor’s Ben Smith last year that many kids coming out of college had been trained for safe spaces. “I don’t think that this generation of college grads has been fully prepared for what we are asking our people to do, which is to commit themselves to the idea of independent journalism,” he told Ben.</p><p>He also raised eyebrows internally when he <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/11/03/2024/in-a-frank-internal-meeting-…; criticism of the Times’ coverage of the 2024 race, much of which came from the paper’s liberal readers, who expressed anger at the paper’s coverage of Donald Trump’s norm-breaking and of Joe Biden’s age.</p></div>