The Dispatch Podcast - Former NYT Producer on Groupthink in Journalism | Interview: Andy Mills

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

Jamie is joined by Andy Mills—host of Reflector and a co-creator of the New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast—to discuss why he left seminary for journalism and what’s gone wrong inside American newsrooms. The Agenda: —Andy’s background —Why is everyone in New York? —Policing curiosity —The outsized power of young journalists —Take them seriously, not literally —Woke McCarthyism —The Twitterization of journalists —What makes a great podcast? Show Notes: —The Dispatch Podcast with A.G. Sulzberger —Andy Mills and Matthew Boll’s Reflector —The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling —Nellie Bowles' book —Tom Cotton's op-ed in the NYT —Adam Rubenstein's Chick-fil-A story The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While other money managers are holding, Dynamic is hunting. Seeing past the horizon, investing beyond the benchmark, because your money can't grow if it doesn't move. Learn more at dynamic.ca slash active. Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is Andy Mills. Andy was one of the first producers hired by the New York Times to help business. their audio team and was part of the team that created the Daily podcast, the very highly popular New York Times podcast, among others. He ultimately would resign from that position amid

some controversy. I encourage those who want to know more about that to go and listen to an episode that he did with Blocked and Reported Podcasts. Suffice to say, I think a lot of the allegations around there were not worthy enough to have Andy resign over, at least the ones that I have read. But that is not the topic of a conversation that we get into today. Andy would go on to work and make the podcast the witch trials of J.K. Rowling that was done by the free press. And he is debuting a new podcast now called The Reflector. He is considered by many people that I respect to be one of the finest audio podcasters and engineers around. So in this episode, we get into what it was like for him to come from a small town and what he

found within the culture of the places he worked in New York City, the New York Times, and an affiliate of NPR, WNYC, as well as what makes a great podcast. I think you're going to find this episode interesting. I hope you enjoy it. And without further ado, I give you Mr. Andy Mills. Andy Mills, welcome to the Dispatch podcast. Hello, Jamie. I'm a longtime listener to your interviews, and I'm very delighted to be actually involved in one. We're delighted to have you. I think of where I want to begin is kind of just tell us a little bit the abbreviated

version of who you are and how you got into media, what your trajectory was in media. As I said in the intro, there's a longer version of this on the podcast blocked and reported that talks about, it gets more depth into some of the controversy. Suffice to say, I think it was not one of the most stories of cancellation that I, bad stories of cancellation I ever heard. I think it's one that would be probably on the most minor side from what I could gather from what I've read and heard. But I would encourage the in-depth version of that to go to the podcast blocked and report it.

But for the listeners who don't know who you are and know your story, Give me the abbreviated version of your story. Well, I'm famous for being abbreviated. No, I'm not, actually. I'm a very long-winded person. That's why I make podcasts so I can edit myself and others down. So I grew up in a small town in the Midwest. I don't really have the traditional background

for someone who ends up as an award-winning journalist these days. I originally wanted to be a minister. I went to Christian College. And while there, I had this really interesting experience where I became less and less interested in a vocation where I would try and convince people to believe what I believed. And I became fascinated with how human beings

form our beliefs, where they come from, and the role that storytelling and the stories of reality, the stories of identity play in how we create our beliefs about reality. And that led me to wanting to become a journalist. I started off in South Sudan reporting about poverty and war. And then I came back to the U.S.

and I stumbled into the world of kind of artful radio storytelling, right as the podcast phenomena was just beginning. And then I went and made a show called Radio Lab at WNYC and worked for years in the public radio world. Then in 2016, I went to the New York Times and I helped them create their audio division. My claim to fame is probably always going to be that I was a part of the team of three that created The Daily,

which became very successful. podcast for the times. But while I was there, I also became the, what was my title there? The new show, no, the head of new show development. And I made a lot of different podcast series like rabbit hole, caliphate, a number of shows for them. And then left in 2021. Recently, I have been focused a lot on culture war stories. I did a big series last year called The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, which looked at the author, J.K. Rowling, and these two different controversies that she was caught up in, obviously the one happening now around sex and gender, but we tried to put it in the context of her controversy in the late 90s, where a group of American Christians

found her to be dangerous and fought to kind of ban boycott her work, to kick her out of polite society. And we use this series to try and understand what's been changing about culture in the last couple decades and also what's remained the same about human nature. And right now, I am on your show in part to promote the fact that I have a new podcast called Reflector. And it's a storytelling podcast, different subject each episode. But it's my attempt to do a kind of storytelling that I think is powerful and that used to be in some ways, the bread and butter of like public radio of narrative journalism, but that I worry has been been a bit eaten up in the cultural changes that have swallowed newsrooms and large aspects

of our society. Well, I want to get to a little bit later, perhaps, you know, what was your, what are your goals with Reflector and what actually makes a great podcast? Because a lot of people that I respect know you, and I've heard them say that you, You are probably one of the great podcast audio engineers of this generation. I would guess only this generation because there wasn't really podcasts, engineers of any previous generations. Well, these people, you surround yourself with great people.

I love, these people sound great. But I'm interested in your time within this world, because, you know, listening to you on some of the other podcasts you've done, you talk about, you know, how you, when you came to New York City for your first job, I guess, at Radio Lab, which. at an affiliate of NPR, I think, is what WNYC is. You're kind of not familiar with this world. And one of the things I think you said is that you were surprised that all the news stations,

all the major news networks had their headquarters in New York City, including Fox News, I think, is what you said on one show. How do you think that affects coverage? Well, I mean, I don't know how aware the average American is because maybe I was less aware than they are, The powerful kind of mainstream media that you hear about all the time, and that gets a lot of criticism both from the left and the right these days, some of it earned and maybe some of it exaggerated.

But it is interesting that geographically, the heart of so much of that mainstream media is in Manhattan. It's not even just New York. It's like one borough of New York. And there is a culture that exists around this mainstream media. press that I was just surprised to see existed, for one. And then I kind of accidentally, because I started there in 2011, and I left there in 2021, in that decade, I had a front row seat to witness the way that the culture, the values, the mission, the ethos of that media world

was being changed and affected in ways that we're not. totally dissimilar from what was happening in politics and what was happening in a lot of different institutions. But what I think was maybe surprising considering the kind of state admission and values of those media institutions. And yeah, I was definitely culture shocked in a way to move into this world where, like I said, my origins were that I had been and somewhat a fundamentalist religious person committed to a narrow worldview. And what was attractive to journalism about me was that I could, instead of telling people what to believe, help everyone understand where people are getting their beliefs from, why an event would shape the point of

view of an individual. And that kind of curiosity mission did seem to be the ethos, at least in those first few years when I started being a journalist, and I was there as slowly that ethos was peeled away and replaced by other things. But there also seemed, from what I could tell, a curiosity about you and almost like this, who is this figure who, I think the, what the example used is that was once believed in creationism. Yeah. You know, people would come up to you and ask, did you really, really believe in that? Uh-huh. I'm trying to get to, in a sense, there's obviously the famous story from 1972 of the New Yorker writer who wrote after the 1972 election that she was totally shocked and all her colleagues were shocked that Richard Nixon won 49

states because she didn't know a single person who supported Richard Nixon. Is someone who is a, you know, in I think you might say that you are longer religious, or at least you're not as religious as you once were, but is it still a curiosity that someone believes in God, has a deep faith in religion that believes in creationism would end up in one of these newsrooms so much so that, you know, people are almost bringing other reporters around to see a zoo animal in the zoo, in the zoo, saying, look at this guy. Is this true? Did you really once believe that? Yeah. I mean, I don't think that that's totally far off. I mean, it's tricky because, uh, there are a lot of, uh, Jewish people in, in, in media and Judaism is, uh, is not, it is not always a marker that someone believes. leaves in a creator god and in the literal genesis. So there definitely is a somewhat religious element still to be found. But when it comes to like some guy who grew up in cornfield,

the cornfields of the Midwest who went to religious college and who has now gotten a new job at NPR, they're like, how the hell did you get here? And there is a sense of credulity about, did you really? believe in creationism? Like, oh, that's wild. And then that would eventually evolve to, do you really know Trump voters? You know, that there was a sense in 2015, especially, that, like, what the hell's going on out there? It was just an assumption that no one in our ranks would believe such things. And I think that that was a product of larger changes that were happening. I mean, I think maybe it can be helpful to think of it as like, when I show up in 2012,

2011, 2012 in this world, yes, I'm a bit of an oddity, but in some ways I think that that created a sense of specialness about me, especially because I was working at Radio Lab. We do a lot of science journalism there, and somebody who had the enthusiasm of coming late into some of the beliefs about science helped kind of create a special lane for me. I wasn't someone who really had much idea of the evolutionary theory until I was in my 20s, because I was such a staunch creationist and I brought a sense of like, wow, we know that? When did we figure this out?

You know, it was a, I think that in some ways you could think of me as a diversity hire. There were definitely moments that there was such a focus on like the fact that I, where I came from, the fact that I didn't go to an Ivy League college, the fact that I'm, you know, I'm not a liberal or a conservative, I'm not easily categorized in those ways. people thought, like, wow, we've got a good one here.

Like someone who's bringing a fresh perspective into our public radio world and essentially set me loose to just chase after my curiosities. And I didn't, there were little signs that there was more policing of acceptable curiosities going on starting in 2013. But really, the moment that it started to really seem like an alarming change was taking place was really around 2014. And in my case, it was when I had stumbled on what I thought was a perfect public radio story, a perfect radio lab story. I had met a mother who had a young child.

And starting around the age of three, her young child, who was a boy, born a boy, was always drawn towards things that are more traditionally seen as girl. Dresses, wanted to have long hair, wanted to play with dolls. and as soon as her child was really able to speak, was saying that they wanted to be seen as a girl, wanted to be called a girl, wanted to change their name to a girl name. And this mother was confused about what exactly you do in a situation like that.

And so she went to go seek out different levels of care that could help her child in whatever way. And she saw that one camp was saying, oh, this is just a phase and just like get her some G.I. Joes and do some kind of gender-reinfor. it'll go away, and then other people were saying, no, no, no, you need to, you've got a trans child and you need to protect that trans child by kind of an unquestioning affirmative approach.

And she, at the end of the day, made the decision to let her three-year-old child transition from being a boy to a girl, sent off an email to friends and family saying, this is now, you know, the new name. There was some social blowback from it, but it seemed for her and her child, that it was the right decision. So fast forward three years. Her child is now a transgender girl at a public school in the first grade and suddenly only wants to be friends of boys,

doesn't want to wear dresses anymore, cuts her hair. There's nothing identifiably, quote unquote, girl about her child who identifies as a girl. And she was struggling with this question, what is a girl? And she asked her child, well, if all these things about you now,

look like quote unquote a boy, whatever. Shouldn't we go back to using your boy name? Should we go back to seeing you as a boy? And her child was like, no, I'm confused. I'm a girl, and I want to keep identifying as a girl, even though nothing about me looks like a girl. And that is a strange and interesting situation for a child to be in, for a mother to be in.

And also, it's a question that seems worth asking in 2014. What is a girl? What makes a girl a girl? It's not the clothes, it's not this. We can talk to sociologists. we can talk to neurologists, we can talk to biologists. And at first, Radio Lab and Public Radio, they loved the story, they were interested in it, we did interviews, we spoke to experts.

But at a certain point, a few younger staffers got upset. And they said, I'll never forget the phrase, this isn't Andy's story to tell, that as a white cis heterosexual male, I had no business trying to tell the story. And in fact, they were suspicious of why I'm so curious about what it is, like, what is a girl at the end of the day? And me and a few other people were a little bit taken aback by this. We're like, this is fascinating. And I also think that this is something that a lot of people would want to explore, right?

This is 2014. This is years before the what is a woman documentary comes out, all that stuff. It was not yet the hot button issue it would once become. but that one, I think it was two different younger staffers bringing this up, that was enough to kill the story. It killed the story right there, and it was, and it was, you know, it was kind of buried and we never, not only did we never turn back to that story, you know, Radio Lab that show never investigated that reporting.

What's interesting, I think, about that story, and if you tie the two things we just discussed together, is that, you know, your previous creationism would seem normal to most of America, I think. Whereas this story, which is being tread on lightly, would seem as almost the way that your colleagues saw creationism. They would think the idea of a two- or three-year-old transitioning most of America as, you know, totally, totally insane. But that was thought to be treated more normal than the idea that you were once a creationist, which I think shows a culture that is very different than the country at large that is consuming the media.

There was also another story I think you wrote about, you wrote to me in your email, which I'd like you to expand upon. When did they interrupt staff meetings with, and what was the context of end white supremacy at WNYC? Well, I mean, there's a lot of things that happened in 2020

that seemed new to the general public that had been occurring in New York media for many years at that point. The idea of having a disruptive group of people stopping a speaker from speaking, trying to police the boundaries of acceptability, making hyperbolic claims about harm being caused by hearing opinions you disagree with

or quote-unquote platforming people whose views you see is dangerous, that had all been growing and gathering steam starting from about 2014. onward and the the claims of the kind of broad claims of white supremacy had especially been present at WNYC where you know during just a regular staff meeting talking about how we're going to be replacing the daytime news lineup with this and that a group of people who are paid and work at WNYC you know I can think of one occasion I know it happened more than this but began chanting, end white supremacy at WNYC

to interrupt the leadership of their own institution from essentially having like a normal all-staff meeting. And I think if you're on the outside, it's really confusing because you're like, well, why would you work at an organization that is white supremacist? Like I would not work at the Daily Stormer. You know, I would not accept that job

because I am opposed to white supremacy. But I think it gets into a little bit of one of the things I want to talk to you about, which is the news media, the news world has been impacted in a somewhat similar way to all of these different institutions of America, from the CDC to the American family. We're living through like an incredible historical chapter of change and disruption that's taken place. And the internet and technology has obviously had a huge influence on that. And I do think you see this in social media behavior on the internet a lot where, people are speaking in kind of a common tongue that's common to their corner of it. And in the internet social media corner

that a lot of these people really live their lives in and they develop their deepest held views in and they actually shape their own identities in, white supremacy doesn't mean what the normal person thinks of when they think of, KKK, right? This is a white supremacy in their mind, having two white men as hosts on their public radio station

was an example of white supremacy because that was too much. There shouldn't be two people with that same identity hosting shows. And it's similar to, like, I don't know if you remember the situation that happened at the New York Times

when Sarah Zhang was hired briefly and then resigned from the New York Times. It came out that this technology reporter who they hired had a series of tweets where she was saying things like, kill all white men, fuck all white men, you know, really, really aggressive things. And, you know, a certain cohort of America was like,

oh my God, I can't believe anyone, let alone a New York Times reporter could use language like that. But if you're me and you're in this world, you're like, oh, they don't mean what they say. This is like a kind of way of showing their kind of commitments to their worldview. it's a little bit of the kind of hyperbole and shock that gets you a little attention on the internet.

She doesn't actually want the death of white people, but at the same time, she did say these things and they weren't disqualifying. So, Andy, what you're saying is they want the same benefit, the take them seriously, not literally, that the Trump campaign in 2016 and supporters were trying to argue for Trump, the famous, don't take him literally take them seriously.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I'm glad you brought it up because I see the forces that have been, I think, having a negative effect on the news media. I see them as two different coalitions. There's some layover between the two, but they are separate and they should be thought of as such. One of them is like your more establishment liberal Democrats. And those are the people who still very much believe in principles like the freedom of speech. They still like the concept of there being kind of an elite ruling class. But they primarily are motivated by a, thought that the Democratic platform, the policies of the Democratic Party, are really, really popular. It's just that Democrats are bad at messaging them. And if only the policies could clearly be communicated to the working class, to the American populace, they would see that voting Democrat is voting in their interest. And so naturally, these people will turn to the media to say, well, if the Media just did their job right, and they were to accurately describe build back better, accurately describe the legislation, accurately describe the economy under Joe Biden, there would just be

a massive amount of support. You see this in kind of establishment figures like Jay Rosen, who's a professor of journalism at NYU, and they say that the biggest problem that journalism has and the fight that they've been having is to say, they're too obsessed with being fair, they're too focused on this lost cause of objectivity and this commitment to both sidesism. And they have been working hard to change that, to say both sidesism is bad. You know, let's leave behind objectivity.

Let's embrace a pro-democracy, pro-citizen journalism. And that they've been having an effect. And then there's this other group that, like you say, is a lot more. For me, it's like the closest equivalent is Trumpism. And those are the people who often get called woke. I don't like to use the word woke because it always feels so pejorative, but I don't know.

How do you describe that group? Jamie. Do you call them woke? Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I think one way what I've heard of it is, is like weaponized political correctness. It was a way that someone defined woke and I thought that was pretty interesting. But actually, I, you know, I want to go back to the J. Rosen group that you were referring to. Yeah, we can come back to the woke. Yeah, let me, well, no, I do think that they make it, I wonder what you would say to this. If you went on air or anybody went on air, let's use a hypothetical person at the New York Times as a podcaster, and said, it is crazy to think that the Democrats launched a conspiracy

to steal the 2020 election. I suspect that would not be a problematic thing to say. And in fact, I think it's probably true. It's crazy to believe that, given the evidence we have. Yeah. But what if you were to say, by the way, I think it's probably at least a 70% issue in the country. Even, you know, most Republicans don't think that in polling. Maybe it's close to 50, 50 of Republicans. But if you go on air, another 70% issue, I think, in the country, maybe you hire and say, I think it's crazy to report that a two-year-old can transition to a different gender at two years old. My guess is that you would be in real trouble at any of the mainstream media outlets. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, I think that that's a fair assessment. And I think that

to try and understand where that's coming from, I do think it's important to note that this group, the the kind of, where often gets called the woke, they, it has been almost like a religious, like, movement. I know that that, there's so many parallels to kind of Trump's most extreme supporters. And I think that because you have focused on that, that's maybe the bridge that we should use to try and say that, like, it is getting down to my worldview that I believe if you look closely at why people believe what they believe, you often can see that there's a lot of commonality there.

I mean, the name of my podcast is called Reflector. And part of that is because I'm telling, telling stories that I hope inspire a sense of deep reflection instead of overreaction. But a part of that is because I try to intimately get into why people believe what they believe. And when you see with more clarity, your fellow man, you often can see a reflection of your own self, your own life experience and that. And there's so much that I see in common with some of the more passionate aspects of Trumpism and the most passionate aspects of like wokeism. And it can be frustrating to me sometimes that there's so much reporting and

focus on these two things without trying to get to the root of it. But both of them, let's just focus on the role that the kind of woken movement played inside of some of these newsrooms was to not necessarily be defined by what they're for, but be defined instead by grievances, and their grievances being like systemic racism, the oppression of the marginalized, the fight against capitalism and white supremacy, and because of that, they become these almost puritanical deputies on behalf of justice, behalf of truth, behalf of the good. And it creates a real McCarthyism-like situation. I know that that sounds like hyperbolic to compare it to McCarthyism, but I actually am not sure that it is. Like, it has truly been a chilling effect that has been underway since around 2014. I

think there are signs that it could be subsiding now because of things that have that have been happening at the New York Times in the past year. But it's like a remarkable thing that we need to grapple with, that they were able and have in some ways still been able to take some of the most interesting stories that are happening in our country and make people afraid to accurately report on them because you don't want to be seen as, you know, being too generous or too curious about the quote unquote wrong side, the quote unquote wrong team, the wrong issues. And that, that, I think that, like, both the Jay Rosen class and the, and the kind of

wokeist class, they are both currently holding a lot of power in these institutions. And journalists like myself, what I'm trying to do with my work, but also by coming on your show here is, I don't know exactly how to go forward. I don't want to, like, I'm not a culture warrior. I'm not here to defeat, stop the Jay Rosens. We got to smash out the wokes. No, I want to debate the Jay Rosens. I want to debate the kind of woke ideology because I think it's worth understanding it on its own terms, putting it under scrutiny and saying, is this the best thing for American journalism? Is this what a democracy that relies upon the work of newsrooms and relies upon the Fifth Estate? Like, is this what we really need in this moment or not? I guess it leads me to the question. And I think from what you said just a little bit earlier about the establishment at some of these institutions,

And from what I've heard of you say other places, like Dean Beckett, the former editor-in-chief of the New York Times. Dean McKay, excuse me, when he basically, in a very, you describe it nicely, like you liked him, said it would be better, you know, for us if we parted ways, if we could do this kind of amicably. Are they afraid of, you know, laying down? They're in the position of power of these institutions. In theory, you know, they are the management. they should be the one setting the culture but it seems from what happened to you and what you report and other people have reported that they are scared of the younger staffers they are scared of the revolution

and I guess my question is is that what your experience is and are they aware of their failure to kind of lay down the culture that they want how that could affect the brand of these historic institutions like the New York Times Well, I think that there is a change happening right now where, you know, Dean Bacay's successor,

Joe Kahn, who's now the current editor-in-chief of New York Times, is going in a noticeably different direction than the direction of kind of the 2020, kind of the peak of this movement's power and cultural influence. So yeah, I do think that they're in a change now, but just to kind of give you a backstory of how they got to where they got, it wasn't. It wasn't that there were some George Floyd protests and suddenly these institutions were willing to toss out certain values and make decisions in the moment that seemed, you know, in contrast with their state admission on their websites. It had been happening four years. Like, for many years, a growing number of people coming into journalism were coming from just different backgrounds. Like, for example, for many years to get a job as a journalist at the New York Times, you would cut your teeth reporting on city council meetings, reporting on local elections in Akron, Ohio, right?

That was essentially how you built up your resume, you built up your chops to get hired at the most powerful newspaper in the world. Now, fast forward to the 20 teens, in many ways because of the changing economy, because of disruption of the internet and of social media, you're now getting journalists who cut their teeth by combing through social media to look for drama that would get clicks on BuzzFeed, on Vox, on Huffington Post, right? They're spending their days, not out in the world, encountering people with a bunch of different views, not covering the difficulties of democracy and action or the, you know, the difficulties of fighting through bureaucracy to get anything done. No, they're going through Tumblr, finding out about the fact that, oh, my God, a bunch of people who are diehard fans of Twilight are canceling the author because it came out that she had some retrograde view and they were able to build up an online. brand where they wrote amusingly about that and entertainingly. And now that person works at the New York Times. And that is one example, I think, but there's dozens and dozens of those people. And then when they come into the New York Times, they are bringing a different value system,

a different mission, a different ethos. And yet again, some of it very interestingly is understandable because of the changes taking place inside of our culture, that they don't want. want to come under the umbrella of the mission of the Times and help the Times to fulfill that mission, they want to build up their personal brand. Some of these journalists only came to the New York Times, well, in part because it pays well, but in part because it would be really good for their personal brand that they've been growing. But once anything happens that might hurt their personal brand, the New York Times, say, publishes an op-ed or a news story that is unpopular on their corner

of social media, they are quick to throw their institution under the bus and to stand with those people who are criticizing it, because in the end, their brand to them, their name to them, is more valuable in the long run than the mission or the brand of the New York Times. And the thing is, like, they're not totally wrong by that. You know, like, it isn't craziness on their part. They are being intelligent and competing aggressively inside of the competitive world of contemporary journalism. I just happen to think it's not good. for democracy. It's not good for these institutions. Or their brand. It wasn't healthy.

And yeah, we saw it in 2020 just explode in the most obvious way. And I think that they made decisions then that I do not think that they would make now. I don't think that right now, the Tom Cotton op-ed that became such a huge firestorm, I don't think that that leads to the outster of the head of our opinions department. I don't think that Donald McNeil Jr. and I, for the incredibly small social sins that we committed, I don't think that we're asked to resign because of some daily beast articles and angry people on Twitter in this world now, even though that's exactly what happened then. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how

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Well, let me give you two examples that have been written recently about the internal maybe in that moment at the New York Times. One was the Adam Rubinstein story in the Atlantic, how he was newly hired there and was at an HR meeting. And they asked him, you know, what's your favorite sandwich? Everyone went around the room. And he was trying to think of what the answer was. So he just said, Chick-fil-A, I like Chick-fil-A sandwiches.

And he was told by the HR head that, you know, that's not allowed to be said. And people snap their fingers in approval. And the other one is in... That is a believable story. I have no sourcing that tells me that it's true, but it is believable. And the second one is, I've just begun Nellie Bowles' new book, Morning After the Revolution Dispatches from the wrong side of history. And among the things she says is that she was, at this point, dating Barry, Barry Weiss, who you know and I know, I guess Barry, Barry was not beloved within the New York Times at the time. She went out, Nellie was out with an editor and said, why are you dating this Nazi?

Which obviously, if you know Barry Weiss is in a totally insane thing to describe her worldview as. She's the most staunch supporter of Jews that I know. And that's saying something. Yeah. So I guess what, I mean, is that also a believable story? And if those are both believable stories, the issue is that there seems to be at least an insane asylum, at least in part of the New York Times that's allowed to

live freely. My question would be is what percentage of the New York Times is that? Both you and I, I think, have friends of the New York Times who are tremendous reporters, great reporters, the best in the business. Oh, they have, yes, they have many of the best in the business work in there. How many people would be considered,

my words, I think certifiably insane, if you're going around calling Barry Weiss a Nazi and snapping figures when someone says they like a Chick-fil-A sandwich. I mean, that is, to me, crazy and a real problem if you're a journalist at a great institution like The New York Times. What is the breakdown of people that are on what I would call the crazy side versus, you know, the side that is some of the best reporters in the business? It's definitely not the majority. I think it's a small minority, but it isn't just younger staffers that are going to snap at you. It is also the occasional editor who has, you know, spent way too much time on Twitter and come to hold views that would be considered extreme and outlier to most American people.

But what she believes are just the norm because of the corner of Twitter that she lives in. I mean, to understand what they're talking about, I think it's important to understand yet again the role that the Internet has been playing. and especially the role that Twitter played from around 2013 up until Elon Musk broke it recently. The way that parents worry about their teenagers with smartphones who seem to be constantly craning their necks staring into the screen, that's pretty much what journalists on Twitter became

for years and years. And it's hard to exaggerate or overstate the role that Twitter played in these institutions. And that's where a lot of this come from. So, yes, when Barry Weiss is being called a Nazi, the person who's saying that is not saying it because they believe that, like, secretly in her heart of hearts,

Barry Weiss is going home and subscribing to, you know, the Daily Stormer's newsletter. It's the same way that they were saying end white supremacy at WNYC. It's the same way that they say J.K. Rowling is anti-trans. It's a, they, these, what they mean is that it's bad and you should ignore them.

And then they're just trying to reach for the most extreme language possible to say so. And yet again, this is a parallel that we see with Trumpism. There's this over-the-top exaggerated hyperbole that comes into the room that I think is, you know,

it's going to happen, especially with the incentives of attention on the internet. It's just, it's a bigger problem when it's happening at these powerful news institutions at a time where we have serious debates in our society. We have serious changes that are taking place. We have serious divisions happening in our society. We need journalism that helps us to see those problems with as much clarity as we can muster, to see our fellow man with

as much clarity as we can have as much empathy and understand as we can have, so that we can just make decisions of how we can navigate and live in a pluralistic democratic society. And instead, what we're getting is that this same stuff that's been affecting our politics, that's affecting our social circles, it's coming into these newsrooms. And it is a minority, but it has the same kind of an effect, right? If you know that you're going, if you, if you, you're going to be nervous to post something on Twitter, if you think that it's going to get a bunch of people, even if they're in bad faith, and even if you totally disagree with them, if it's going to make you the bad guy on Twitter that day, you're just not going to post it. And inside the world of the New York Times,

Yes, that literally was going on, people not wanting to post and say things on Twitter, but it was just a version of that you're not going to want to publish something in the Times. And then you're not going to want to state a view in the office.

And then whenever we were working remotely because of the pandemic, we were relying heavily on this thing called Slack, which is an internal communications system that works somewhat like Twitter in a way, and it became fueled with the same dynamics of Twitter so that when something would happen,

like there'd be, an uproar about an article we published that was seen as being too generous to a Trump supporter or too generous to a point of view that was seen as morally wrong by this small but powerful faction. They would go on this slack

and they would start saying, I can't believe that we publish this. We have to take this down. This writer should apologize. The New York Times sees a publisher correction. And the majority of us, and especially those of us, we were senior.

Most of us had way more position of power and influence than they did. But to go on to Slack and say, oh, hey, guys, I think you're wrong, became as scary as going onto Twitter. And so what editors would do is they would say, like, you know, when I would say, hey, look, I really think that James Bennett's been getting

a raw deal on this Slack channel. I'm going to say so, the editors will go, no, no, no, just say it to us. You know, don't put it in there. We don't want to put a target on your back because they knew it might lead to the end of my career if I could say the wrong thing on an internalized Slack system.

That's how wild it got. But the dynamics are completely tied to the dynamics of internet behavior, internet tribalism, internet group think, and the kind of self-censorship that comes into play whenever you're afraid of the repercussions of following your own curiosity or sharing your own point of view or standing up for what you think is something wrong that's happening. Why do you think management, in your view, has been more able to assert control over kind of this. more radical culture now than they were before. I think that we've seen, I mean, number one, Elon Musk broke Twitter and it's no longer able to gin up the sort of cancel culture public shaming mob that it could have in 2020 and 2021.

And I think that that is honestly maybe, I know that people who love the website Twitter are, a lot of them are upset with what Elon Musk has done. I never liked it. And I'm happy that it no longer has that power because I think that it was largely a destructive force. And I think it led to a lot of journalists living in smaller and smaller echo chambers

at a time when we needed to be helping lead people into larger and larger perspectives of what's happening in the country. But I think that that's an element that they're saying, wow, Twitter can't do what it once did. I also think that they're embarrassed. I think that now that Elon Musk has broke Twitter, a lot of the same journalists

and a lot of the same editors, who would make a decision to change a headline or to take down a story or to publish a correction, not because there was anything wrong with the actual journalism or the headline, but because enough people were angry on Twitter and posting screenshots of them saying

that they no longer subscribe to the New York Times. I think it felt like, well, we have to respond, we have to respond. And now they realize, like, oh, that was really nobody. That was such a small amount of people. They seemed to have power, but they only had power because we were giving it to them. And I think that they're realizing

that they don't need to stand for that. I also think on the other side of it, there is a sense that these values that undergirp places like the New York Times matter. And I think that there was a moment where there was a questioning of those deep, deep assumptions. And some of that is just human nature. Remember how it felt?

If you lived in American cities and you have an office job, and suddenly you found yourself like spending a lot of time over COVID alone, working remote, or maybe just with your family, working remote over Zoom calls day in and day out, and then the George Floyd protest were happening, right? And your sense of lonesomeness,

a sense of kind of like the world's on fire. And a lot of people started wondering if they are on the right track. And people who worked at the New York Times are just people. They're just humans like anyone else. You're Dean Backees, your A.G. Soulsberger. You don't think a guy, like the AG Soulsburger, who's the publisher in the New York Times, whose family has owned and handed down the role of publishing for years and years. A wealthy man with light skin, right? You don't think a guy like that was wondering if he, wondering maybe anew if like he was experiencing a kind of white privilege

and maybe they had a point, right? I think he thought for a time like, wow, maybe I am on the wrong side. Maybe we should not be so committed to objectivity. Maybe we need to lean in a little bit harder into a kind of activist mindset. that maybe we need to listen to these young people. I think that there was a moment where they thought, maybe they have a point, but then I think that over time,

that issue I brought up again at the beginning, but like the lack of a coherent worldview and actually this being largely about grievances and a kind of eternal fight against these ever-changing embodiments of those grievances, I think that that morning after, as Nellie Bowles says, it kind of came into view.

And they're like, oh, actually, our values are sturdy. Our foundations, like curiosity, open-mindedness, helping engage in civic debate, helping to inform people about points of views, even if they don't hold them. I think that right now we're seeing a lot of these institutions,

including the time, say, oh, that actually was more sturdy than whatever it was that we were succumbing to in the moment. Let me close with the remaining time we have and just on podcasting in general. What makes a good podcast, a great podcast? Well, and for my taste, you want to have an experience, right? Even if the experience that you're having is just listening to two or three interesting people,

have a conversation or debate or talk through something, if you're inside your headphones and you feel like you have company at a moment where otherwise you would be alone, I think that that could be powerful. Now, to make it go from like, this is a powerful experience to like this is a really, remarkable one, I have a lot of strong views about what exactly that takes. I think that you want to tell a story, even if you're just doing interviews, like human beings at our basis are our story obsessed and we need stories to understand ourselves, understand the world, understand what's at stake. And to tell a great story, you've got to get messy. And all the best stories are ones in which

you encounter someone whose life is not exactly like your own, whose views aren't exactly like your own and they have to, you're able to learn and see how they've come to the views they have come to so that when in the story, inevitably, there's some decision that they have to make to go left or right, to go down one path or another. You can relate to that decision no matter which way they decide. It's that kind of age-old storytelling principle. And then I think the best stories leave us thinking about something beyond just the text of what's there. Like the storytelling that we try and do at Reflector, you know, if, if the story itself is about addiction treatments that have been proven to be very effective but are not often used, if it's

about the debate happening around rap on trial or, you know, or kind of assumed moral panics around the immorality and pop music, if it's about J.K. Rowling and the debate she's in, I want it to be interesting and I want my reporting to be sound on the surface and and in the text. I want to make sure we're doing all the things that make for good journalism. You know, clarity, context, curiosity, accountability, transparency, non-partisanship.

But if we're doing our job really well and we tell a really great story, I'm not just thinking about the text. I'm thinking about the subtext. I'm thinking about bigger themes, like the importance of doubt. I'm thinking about other aspects of my own life. And in some ways, that's,

I believe that there's something about a great podcast that is similar to great music. You're listening in both regards, but a great album or a great song, you're not just admiring the lyrics, the beat, whatever. You are in some ways finding a way of losing yourself in it. You know, when you hear the lyrics, you know,

of a great heartbreaking love song, you're not necessarily thinking about what the singer must have been going through. You're thinking about your own experiences with the pleasures and pain of love. And I think in my most ambitious state, like that's always what the story is that I'm trying to, to do or striving for. And then, of course, not every story can do that every time.

So you look at how you can portion that out. Like, in this conversation I'm having with you, I'm trying to dare to be honest, even if I haven't got all the answers and to be a good witness for the things that I saw and not in the context of that, try and, like, rob the people who I disagree with of their complexity and of their humanity, in part because that's me living out, you know, the values that I think are, make a good person, a good citizen, but also it's just a better podcast. If I come on here and I tell you a story called, these people suck and here's why, that's not a good story, you know, that's not, that's not, and the reason it's not a good is part because like we know

that down deep it's not true. Humans are way more complicated than that. You know, I, I despise this public shaming that I've been reporting on for years and that eventually, I was caught up in and that had a really terrible effect on my life. I despise that action, but I'm also curious about it. I don't think that people publicly shame because they're just downright evil, and we should just, you know, cancel them for canceling us. I want to understand what is going on at the root of this experience. Why would some stranger who's never met me get on Twitter and try and get me to lose my job?

Well, there's an answer to that. And looking into the answer to that, we can see our human nature. We can see something that actually is relatable, you know. And finally, other than The Reflector, which is your new show and some of the other podcasts that you've been involved with, what podcasts have impressed you the most?

Which ones do you point to as the gold standard beyond some of the work that you've done? Well, the dispatch podcast is truly, okay, well, I mean, There's different. Podcast is like almost a silly word because there are so many variations of what a good podcast could be. The kind of podcast that I make, our gold standard is a show called S-Town. It's Brian Reed, a producer for This American Life. And it is journalism, but it's also storytelling. It's very literary. It's trying to really live in the shoes of a very autumn. American and see what his life was like and what the country and his community looked like to him. And I think that it was just really, really well done. And it came out before this cultural moment became so all engulfing that it was allowed to get into the weirder parts of being human without having to kind of moralize and politicize and unnecessary ways.

Andy Mills, thank you for joining the Dispatch podcast. Jamie, thank you for You know, Thank you.