8 Remarkable Global Citizens
Who
The world’s preeminent newspaper, with unprecedented global reach, from Times Square to Tiananmen Square and beyond.
Because
The paper is redoubling its international coverage—a test case and model for the future of the entire news industry.
Photographed
By Stephen Wilkes in the newsroom on May 30, 2013, following the Pulitzer Prize awards luncheon.
The Story
Newspapers as we know them may seem perilously close to extinction. For its survival, the New York Times is banking on enriched foreign coverage. “The international pages are the soul of our news pages,” says Jill Abramson, executive editor, in her book-lined office a block from Times Square. “Our readers depend on us to witness and tell them what is happening in the world.”
Most other papers, with shrunken budgets, have been cutting foreign operations. The Times still has a 75-strong foreign desk and 24 overseas bureaus, including one of the only remaining fully staffed news offices in Kabul. Not that the Times is immune to market forces: Staff cuts have become an annual reality. “While it’s painful to see colleagues leave,” says Abramson, “none of our international reporting has been reduced.” By December, the International Herald Tribune—which is based in Paris and also publishes in Asia—will be rebranded the International New York Times, allowing for 24-hour writing and editing from around the globe and making the Web site more robust. With 1.8 million U.S. readers, increasingly creative Web efforts and significant upticks in digital subscriptions, and a gamble on expanded readership abroad, the Times is fast becoming the world’s newspaper.
The Times has also poured resources into a Chinese-language Web site, with staff in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong producing content for the largest online audience in the world. That investment didn’t stop the paper from publishing an exposé on the vast wealth accumulated by former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s family. (The piece won the paper one of its four 2013 Pulitzers—three for international stories—but resulted in the Chinese government blocking access to the Times’s Web site.) Given the paper’s six Pulitzers for international reporting in the last five years, the gamble seems to be paying off.
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