The New Yorker Radio Hour - Bonus: David Remnick Takes Calls on the Midterms and the Media

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

In a guest appearance on WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show,” David Remnick, who hosts the New Yorker Radio Hour, discusses the Democratic Party’s identity crisis and the candidates vying in the midterm elections; the late newspaper magnate Donald Newhouse, and the importance of editorial independence in journalism; Remnick’s upcoming live taping at the Tribeca Festival, with “Pod Save America” ’s Jon Lovett, on June 10th; and, most important of all, the Knicks.  Join David Remnick and Jon Lovett at the Tribeca Festival.   New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we have a bonus episode of the podcast for you. On Wednesday, David Remnick appeared on WNYC's Brian Lera Show, and he talked with Brian about the late newspaper mogul, Donald Newhouse, as well as the New York Knicks finally reaching the NBA finals for the first time in over a quarter century. And also, the Radio Hour's upcoming live event at the Tribeca Festival. David will be sitting down on June 10th with John Lovett, the former Obama speechwriter and political podcaster to talk about the midterm elections and much more. If you want to join us for that event, go to Tribecafilm.com slash audio.

That's Tribecafilm.com slash audio. Here's Brian Laird talking with our host, David Remnick. Brian Laird Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. David Remnick is with us, the editor-in-chief of the New Yorker and host of the New Yorker Radio Hour, which the magazine and we here at WNYC produced together. We'll talk about this morning's midterm elections news, some media news, including CBS firing Scott Pelley,

after he criticized their new boss, Barry Weiss. That broke last night. Yes, we will talk about the Knicks, opening their first NBA finals in 27 years tonight and hoping for their first championship since 1973. David wrote a, I'll call it, euphoric New Yorker piece about that. And we'll preview a live taping. David will be doing it.

doing for the New Yorker Radio Hour next week as part of the Tribeca Film Festival with former Obama speechwriter and now podcast host John Lovett. That'll be next Wednesday, June 10th at 815 p.m. at the Tribeca event space called Spring Studios on St. John's Lane. So, David, I did the event plug at the top instead of just at the end of our conversation. Wasn't that nice of me? You're a total mensch. And at the cost of stretching your patients then, I'll be at the Y tomorrow night with my colleagues, Evan Osnose, and Susan Glasser and Jane Mayer, the 92nd Streetwide. To talk politics is a lot to talk about. Yes, tomorrow night at the 92nd Street.

Why, in fact, we had Susan and Evanan together Monday for what was a great conversation about politics. So I'm sure that'll be awesome. So, yeah. I just thank God that it's occurring on a non-Nick game night because, you know, I would have wriggled out of that baby really fast. Yeah, yeah. You scheduled it back when the NBA schedule came out in October. Okay, I'm kidding.

But I do want to preview your Tribeca event a little bit, so we'll totally upstage it. No, I'm kidding. But maybe the biggest thought about the event in all seriousness, actually, very seriousness. is that it's part of the Tribeca Festival's 25th anniversary season because it was created to help bring Lower Manhattan back and New York City as a whole back after 9-11,

which was 25 years ago this September. You were already editor of the New Yorker at that time. Do you ever stop and think how remarkable the city's comeback has been after that devastating attack, which could have scared people and businesses off from coming or staying here? Well, I think about it all day long. I mean, I'm sitting here and talking to you from One World Trade Center. And the view out my window, if I look down, chillingly, is the imprint of those two towers,

you know, the memorial and the museum there. And yet, the resilience of the city in every sense has been extraordinary. My love for this city is unbounded. And I remember that day as if it's yesterday. I was in my office and could see out our window even from Midtown what was happening and slept in my office for days thereafter working on what would become known as the black issue, the Art Spiegelman Francois-Mouli cover those ghostly towers missing from the skyline. So I think about this, or at least it's a presence in my head as it is for so many New Yorkers

of a certain age every day. Yeah. And I forgot that the New Yorker offices are there in the World Trade Center itself and that so many businesses have run back there. I have a family member who works for the Mets cable channel, SNY, New York Mets, and they're in the World Trade Center. So just two media examples there of how people didn't get spooked, business owners didn't get spooked from even going right back there to what. what we called for a while, ground zero. You know, it's funny, well, not so funny, but people would, once we moved down here,

people would come and visit me at the office and for the first year, I could see them looking out the window and like a feeling of anxiety or dread would come over them because they knew, you know, just a few years earlier what had happened here. And that just doesn't happen anymore. Life has this, this, this,

whether you like it or not, a way of just speeding along. And in a positive sense, I'm just very proud of New York and New Yorkers for the resilience they've shown. And there's even a larger picture thought there, I think, in a historical context, which is that New York's demise has been predicted so many times from the Great Depression, from crime in the 70s through its peak around 1990, from 9-11, from deindustrialization, from white flight, from the pandemic, now from Zeran Mamdani,

as his political opponents would like people to believe at least, and yet it never actually happens, right? I think the city is blessed with so much energy and so much talent and centrality. Look, you can feel it even in an event like this week that, you know, in the greater stretch of things, is insignificant. It's, you know, very tall people running up and down a court, throwing a ball through a hoop.

But there's such joy in it. And there's this kind of makeshift community happens in a way that I just find fantastic. The New Yorker had a cover last week of Jalen Brunson, you know, in a very expressive, you know, mode and expression and looming above New York Knicks of the past, DeBusher, Bradley, Reed, Earl Monroe, Bernard King, etc., Patrick Ewing.

And it was not only sold out all over the place in the city, this is a print magazine. There were lines up and down the block in Greenwich Village at one store

and the proprietor was taking names and addresses so that we could resupply them. Wow. Which was an incredible kick and had everything to do with this desire of

to be part of something joyful. And this, God knows, you know, Brian, we've spent many hours over the years in conversations about things that are the opposite of joyful, particularly in our public and political life. So to see the city, even if you're not a particularly ardent

or knowledgeable fan who cares, get into this, even for a couple of weeks, is a real kick. I guess you could sell those covers as prints or give them away with, subscriptions as thank you gifts, maybe you're already doing some things like that.

It's nice when people subscribe. I'm very grateful for that. But you know, you actually touched on something I was going to wait till the very end of our conversation to bring up as you bring that word joy and the feelings that people have around the Knicks right now. And I wanted to ask Mayor Mammani this yesterday when he was on and we touched on the Knicks, but we ran out of time. But the question could apply to you, too, David, for someone whose work is primarily built around the most serious and daunting realities of life and politics as human beings, how is it that rooting for a team to win a game, a mere game, can produce such exhilaration?

And I was going to point out to everybody, but you just did it, that at the end of your muse on the Knicks and the New Yorker, you're right, this is what joy feels like. Well, you know, I was, I'm of a certain age, and I was a little boy when the Knicks won in 1970 in the most dramatic fashion. The older listeners among them will remember that the Knicks came into game seven against the Lakers. The Lakers had Wilk Chamberlain, Jerry West, and Elgin Baylor. This was an amazing team. And the Knicks were beat up, and their center, the soul of the. of the team was badly hurt and not expected

to play in game seven at the garden. And in a way that we might look down upon now, they pumped up his leg with cortisone and God knows what else. And it was like Murray Kempton, the great columnist for in those days, probably the Post and then eventually Newsday, compared Willis Reed coming out onto the court and lifting the spirits of the rest of the team like El Cid,

the great Castilian medieval warrior, being strapped dead onto his steed and led into battle. And he came out, he hit the first two shots, and that's all he had to do. The spirit was sapped out of L.A. and Walt Frazier led them to victory. And it was, and here's how I consume that game, in bed on the radio, because it wasn't broadcast on TV locally. Oh, wow. And I remember it.

it was a moment of real joy. Was it important in the sense of, you know, capital I important? No. It was strangers throwing a ball through a hoop elsewhere in New York City. Okay. Did you want to finish the thought? No, I just, and I, and I, so this little passage this season has been a joy, an absolute joy, and no matter what happens, to be honest. Listeners, you can join our conversation with David Remnick here, 212, 433.

WNYC, call our text, 212, 433, 9692, maybe about New York's demise being exaggerated over and over again or about podcasting or other media as a force in elections these days, which we'll get to, and the Newhouse family preserving editorial independence at the New Yorker and elsewhere in the Condé Nest portfolio when that's under a lot of attack, we'll get to that. 212, 433, 962, anything about the midterm elections?

Anyone from Nebraska listening right now following the Dan Osborne campaign, which we will also get to, not much publicized in most places, but really interesting, and the focus of the New Yorker Radio Hour last weekend. Anyone from California want to weigh in

on the governor or L.A. mayor is also still coming in from last night. Anyone want to answer that question? we were just kicking around about sports or the Knicks. How does a mere game, any kind of sport, any kind of game creates such strong feelings of joy and hope or get you down when your team loses compared to much bigger things that take place in the world? 212-433-9692. Just one more thing on that, David. You know, Mayor Mabani wrote in the New York Times of all the things for him to have an op-ed or guest essay about.

in the New York Times the other day, you know, people think, oh, it's going to be about child care. It's going to be about equal rights under international law. It's going to be whatever. It was the cultural importance of his favorite soccer team, the Arsenal. Yeah, he likes Arsenal a lot. And Arsenal had a great season and came up short in the European championship to Paris, San Germain. But, yeah, you have to have some source of this. in your life, some source of obsession and joy.

Otherwise, you know, you'll be in bad straits. And I remember those people who used to go to city ballet at a certain point three times a week in the cheap seats just to be obsessed about the latest dance of George Balanchine. It can be a high brow pursuit or a lowbrow. What the hell's the difference? It just something that takes you out of yourself

and joins you to other people, in real life, whether it's surrounding a television over more than one beer or in the actual arena or a theater or something like that, there's a transcendent quality to it. Even if on closer examination, there's something silly about it too. So listeners, 212-433-9-6-9-2, does any sport you follow or team you follow or athlete you follow have something more than I'd like to root for the home team or the home person to win or lose some kind of larger cultural significance for you. Like we won't get into the details here, but as Zerun Mamdani wrote in the New York Times on their sports site, The Athletic, what the Arsenal represented to him in part.

212-433-9-6-92 with David Remnick. All right, your blurb for. or your Tribeca event says you'll discuss the midterm elections, the Democratic Party's identity crisis, the influence of podcasting on our politics, because you guessed is the podcaster John Lovett, and what counts as a scandal these days, and should be really good with you and John Lovett. Why the Democratic Party's identity crisis, what do you mean by that? Well, I think it's fair to say that even though Donald Trump seems to be. be on any number of fronts in really bad shape, whether it's in the Poles or in the Iran War,

which is an absolute strategic disaster or just his erratic behavior. You know, he's clearly losing footing with everybody except for the hardcore base, which itself may be shattered or at least fracturing in some spots. I don't think that's a lot of I think you can say that the Democratic Party has put forward a coherent vision of the future or politics for the future. And I think victory is anything but assured in November. And it's not just because of the redistricting drama. It's also because the candidates put forward in large measure are not Um, ideal. I mean, look, a lot of people don't want to say this and he will probably win in anyway.

But the gentleman in Maine is not what I would call, as it turns out, an ideal candidate for Senate. Graham Platner. Yeah. And I had him on the show. He, you know, he's on the New York radio hour. He's appealing in some ways. And it's certainly an excellent thing to have people who are come from different backgrounds other than going to law school and practicing law. or something to run for Congress. That's great. But I mean, the details begin to add up, and it's deflating. It's deflating.

It's interesting. I don't want to get too sidetracked on the race in Maine, but, you know, interesting that you bring him up as the example, because certainly his supporters will say that it's a distraction from his populism to talk about his past alleged scandals. The tattoo, Graham Platner was never a Nazi. The sexting, well, Donald Trump has done worse than that. Yeah, of course.

By all accounts. Of course that's all true. And they're not relevant, really, to who's going to be the best person to represent the state of Maine in the United States Senate. I think that's telling yourself a fairy tale. Now, you have to make a choice and vote for one or the other. Or otherwise give yourself the empty moral satisfaction of staying home, which is no choice at all. But to just be dismissive of all these things and think

this is the best you can do, I think is a fairy tale. Really, I mean, when you're at the level of saying, he didn't know it was a Nazi tattoo. Give me a break. And second of all, and these, you know, this rush of comments that came out on Reddit, I, okay, I'm glad they're working through their marriage. I'm glad you've decided to transcend those comments from before. But the place to work out your own personal drama is not in the midst of a Senate race. Ideally, a senatorial candidate, maybe I'm asking too much, has his, how do I put this gently, has his stuff together as an adult to be a decent human being with a vision of what he or she is going to do, as a legislator.

Is that so terribly much to ask? Apparently it is. And a listener who is a woman chimes in and then sending the wife out to apologize for her husband's sins as usual. But on the other hand, the marriage did survive. I don't want to be sanctimonious. I don't want to be crazily sanctimonious.

we're all grown-ups. We understand that there are, what's the euphemism, ups and downs in a marriage and so on and so forth. I just would prefer not to have these personal dramas at such a level be what we're discussing in a Senate race that is extremely consequential to whether or not the Democrats have a chance in hell of taking the Senate, which is already a very, very, it's a long,

shot. And here we are two men discussing, you know, this part of the topic, and there should be women's voices on it if we were to keep going down this rabbit hole. But there is a difference, I think, between a couple that goes through something like that and the marriage survives. And let's say Anthony Wiener, where it was really bad enough that his wife left him. And so, you know, on and on. But let's take a call from Dominic in the Bronx, who agrees that the Democratic Party has an identity crisis. Hey, Dominic, you're on WNYC with David Remnick from the New Yorker. Good morning, my two neighbors. I work down and Tribeck at BMCC, and I live in Riverdale, so we're all neighbors. I don't even know where to begin. I am so pissed off at the Democratic

Party that I don't, I go out of my way to find a reason, some glimmer of hope in that that party and it's kind of like being a Yankee fan um why bother you know that they're going to muck it up somehow uh you know Donald Trump should not be the president of the United States he should be in a cell added with a box of crayons and I speak from experience he would be really he would be well in a psychiatric institution. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, needs, as I told your screener, who's wonderful, they need to break up. The parties need to break up.

I will vote. I will hold my nose. But I am 53 and tired of looking to the Democrats. I gave up on the Yankees 35 years ago. I gave up on baseball on all sports. These are monopolies. and there are capitalist infrastructures that are disgusting. But I like watching the Little League game play.

I love watching kids get into the sport. And I think a good senator is someone who doesn't want the position. Not someone who is hell bent on getting that position, because they want power and the power belongs to us, not them. They work for us, not the reverse. And this seems to be the problem. in this country. Everybody believe.

Let me ask you a quick, quick follow-up question, and then we're going to play a clip from last week's New York or radio hour that you couldn't have done better to set up if you had known it was coming. When you say Democratic Party should split up, should it split up into a sort of centrist wing or an ammdani wing, or do you mean something specific by that? Well, I think the word democratic. should be struck from the English language everyday use because there is no sense of it in this country. Nobody really wants to take on the hard work of a true democracy.

Everybody looks to the oligarchs. They look to the elites. They look to these charlatans and the smiling, empty suits on television. And it's, or I'm sorry, on the Internet. And it needs to stop. We need to, a society is a group of people who, for whatever reason, agrees to live next door. I worry about my neighbors and the people with whom I interact on a daily basis. I don't know much about California.

I have nothing against it, but I don't know people in California. The nation state is different. I'm sorry, but getting back to the Democratic Party, break it up. Call it something for working families party is a good start. Thank you very much, Dominic. I appreciate your call and your passion. So this gets us, David, to your segment on the radio hour last week, which I think is actually quite on point with Dominic's call from the Bronx.

Your lead guest was a U.S. Senate candidate from Nebraska, Don, Dan Osborne, who's an independent. and your premise was he could tip Nebraska out of its long-time Republican dominance in the Senate without being a Democrat. Not a household name, Dan Osborne. Why did you feature him on the radio hour? Well, first of all, I don't think he can afford to be a Democrat. I think if you run as a Democrat in Nebraska statewide, he knows that's a recipe for losing.

So he runs as an independent, I think almost winkingly. But he's very, there's something very appealing. about him to a lot of people. He had a factory job. He was a union leader, led a strike, eventually got fired. He's quite intelligent. His argument for being in the Senate is in fact this notion of representation, just part of what your previous caller was referring to, that you know, that you don't, he's running against the notion that the Senate is, by nature dominated by people who were of the 1%. And I think that's, he's making that very plain spoken appeal statewide.

Whether he can pull it off as a Democrat statewide and a Nebraska's remains an open question. So here's a clip, though, folks, of Dan Osborne and David Remnick on the New Yorker Radio Hour last week. And to David's point, it starts with Osborne saying something. you would rarely hear from a candidate for United States Senate. I'm getting ready to remortgage my house so I can pay my bills. That's probably unique for Senate candidates. Yeah. And last Friday, I just quit my job as a pipe fitter so I can campaign full-time.

What does politics look like to you? When you look at the Senate, the way it's composed, what its concerns are, the language it speaks, where do you think it's failing you? Robin Williams. The late comedian, he said it best. He said, our politicians should be wearing NASCAR jackets with patches of their sponsors, so we know how they're going to vote. It's the corrupting money. The corrupting money.

Citizens United. Corporations are not people. Money's not free speech. You shouldn't be able to donate an unlimited amount of money to an independent expenditure. That's how Elon must pump $300 million into the election. That is too much influence and control. And you can almost relate every single issue that we are going to talk about and people talk about. to a money interest at some point, right?

Dan Osborne with David Remnick on the New Yorker Radio Hour last week. Want to talk about that clip? Yeah, I should just say, you know, just for orientation, for those who are not following the Nebraska Senate, race very closely, that Pete Ricketts, the Republican, is probably got a two-and-three chance of winning. Osborne is an outsider to the political process. It's a very red state by nature. It is far from a given that Osborne can win.

In fact, the polls really do have it at this moment, and it's early, a fairly comfortable lead for Ricketts, who's very, very well known throughout the state. But that said, that is part of what the Democrats are trying to find a vocabulary for. We've lived through the last decade of this kind of, well, we know it all too, well, and we can use some shorthand for it, a kind of right-wing populist anti-elitism led by a corrupt billionaire. The ironies are myriad in that description, and I could go on about it. What the Democrats have to do, and they're struggling with, is finding a vocabulary that has an element of populism when it comes to income divides, which continue to grow and grow and grow in this country,

in a situation in which my children's generation does not have prospects to buy a house or an apartment and certainly don't see themselves as doing better than their parents. That's a basic element of politics. So how do the Democrats find a vocabulary for that honestly, whether it's in the progressive camp or the liberal camp or centrist camp? How does that conversation move along? Somebody like AOC has a very clear way of discussing these issues, less clear on foreign policy, but quite clear on domestic policy. I see a lot of people struggling. Classically, I think Chuck Schumer struggles to give a language to this. So that's the, or at least one of the big dilemmas in the day.

I'm going to take one call of pushback, though, before we move on to some other topics with my guest, David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour. He's going to be at the Tribeca Film Festival with the podcaster and former Obama speechwriter. John Lovett, a week from tonight, we're previewing some of the top. that they're taking on as well as talking about other things. But I think against this notion of the Democrats having an identity crisis is Daniel and Manhattan. Hi, Daniel, thank you for calling in. Well, thank you for taking my call. Yeah, I think it's an absurd thing to say that the Democratic Party is falling apart and doesn't have a message. We have it definitely in our state and local level.

Absolutely. We're winning on affordability in all sorts of other topics. And to sit there and to say otherwise is just to look for personality. So Mr. Rimick, you're one description that you gave of the senator from or the senator, senator, senator, senator, senator, senatorial candidate from Maine. You just, you didn't want say one thing about a policy and that you're in favor or against of. You just talked about his personality. And that's the problem with our politics.

We're back to personalities. And if you recall, back in 2020, the Republicans did not for the first time in the history of their party. put up a party platform. No party platform. Well, I live under the Democratic Party platform. I know the maintenance of it. I vote Democrat because I don't agree with the party platform or the policies of the Republicans. And we're reshaping. Do we have a problem with our national candidates? Absolutely. Do I have a problem with Jeffries? Absolutely. I wish he was gone. I think he's an ineffective leader. Do I have a problem with Chuck Schumer? Yes, I wish he was gone. I think he's ineffective. but I know what my policies are.

I know what I'm not going to vote for. Go, go for it. Who do you like? Who do I like? Yeah, who do you find a lot of the policies? It represents your point of view. I'm just curious. Do you want it from the state of New York?

Whatever you like. Or would you like it from somewhere else? Up to you. From my home state, when it came to the governor, I love Gretchen Whitmer. I loved everything she said. I liked a lot of the policies of, Cuomo, not his personality, but I think he saved us through the pandemic. I could go on. I like a bit of what our Gillerbrand does. I like a lot of her policies. There are things I don't like, but, you know,

compared to Chuck Schumer, I like her a lot more, but do we have time to sit down and talk policy? That's what I would expect for me was to talk policy, not personality. Well, we with respect, sir, right? With real respect, and I can only respect your point of view. I'm not talking about personality. What I'm talking about, we're living in an emergency. I think you would agree with that. I think Donald Trump represents a threat to democratic institutions and norms and the spirit of a democracy that's so profound to those who see it, that a challenge. challenges the opposition to act with clarity and strength and some coherence. That's not about personality.

And unless I'm wrong, and maybe I am, I don't yet see an oppositional force that is going necessarily to win. I see him losing ground. I see him losing faith with a lot of former supporters. I look at, for example, the Latino vote, which he did exceptionally well with in 2024, now leaving his side, probably largely because of these abusive immigration policies, if you want to politely put it that way. But it's not a matter of policy. It's a matter of clear expression of what an American future can look like.

And that has to do with policy. It also has to do with a sense of what Americanness is. And it's not, well, I guess it's interesting that we're coming on this 250th birthday of the nation. And it's only a few weeks away. And what are we talking about? We're talking about a UFC fight on the South Lawn right next to a destroyed east wing and a collapsing concert. I just, it's pathetic. And I'm old enough to remember 1976.

And for all the problems in the country at that time, there was this incredibly regal, moving spectacle of tall ships sailing through the Hudson and elsewhere that was quite inspiring for all the problems of the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America in 1976. And we have this. I mean, it's a kind of symbol of the disarray that we're in. Gerald Ford was the president for the 1976 bicentennial of the United States, and he didn't even try to put his face on a $200 bill. What was wrong with that man? Daniel, thank you for pushing back. That's why the show exists. So we engage in these conversations for multiple points of view.

We're going to continue with David Remnick in a minute. And we're going to turn more to the media side of things. Stay with us. Hi, it's David Remnick. Please join us for a live taping of the New Yorker radio hour at the 25th anniversary of the Tribeca Festival. I'll be there with the former Obama speechwriter and co-host of Pod Save America, John Lovett. We'll talk about the state of the nation and the state of podcasting and much more. The show is Wednesday, June 10th, and tickets are available at Tribecafilm.com.com slash audio.

Tribecafilm.com slash audio. See you there. Brian there on W. NYC, as we continue for another 10 minutes or so with David Remnick, editor-in-chief of the New Yorker and host of the New Yorker Radio Hour, which is produced jointly by the magazine, and we hear at WNYC. He will be making two appearances, one tomorrow with New Yorker writers Evan Osnos and Susan Glasser at the 92ndes, now called 92Y, I guess. And next Wednesday, June 10th at 815 at the Tribeca event space called Spring Studios on St. John's Lane as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, which I think now they just call it Tribeca Festival, right, David? Because it's so much more than film. Yes, that's right. Like your interview of the former Obama speechwriter and podcast host John Lovett, who's going to be there.

And speaking of the media, I want to ask about the eulogy you wrote in the New Yorker for Donald Newhouse, the owner of Condé Nast, which publishes the New Yorker, Donald Newhouse, who died last month at the age of 96. You called him a newspaper visionary who understood the value of editorial independence. People may know the name of his higher profile brother, S.I. Newhouse, a little more. So for the initiated, who, Who is or was the Newhouse family, maybe beginning with their dad, and then we'll get to YU-centered editorial independence, which might be obvious in the Trump administration era. Sure. Well, I think everybody in New York knows who the Salzburgers are, the owners of the New York Times, and they probably know who Rupert Murdoch is, the owner of the Post and the journal. The Newhouse's initial business and fortune was built on medium-sized newspapers beginning in Staten Island with the Staten Island advance and then in Cleveland

and New Orleans and Portland and so on. And eventually Condy Nest. And obviously those, that size and scale newspapers have been, you know, deeply challenged in recent years for all the reasons we know. But what I was trying to get at is Cy Newhouse and Donald Newhouse, who in effect own the New Yorker and much else, knew the meaning and the importance in a democracy and also in the business of journalism of the independence of editors to do their work without having to look over their shoulder and worry about the business or political interests of the owners.

And in Sharp and Donald Newhouse, in his own modest and quite lovely way, and Sy Newhouse too, never once, I've been editing this magazine since 1998. never once, I never got a phone call saying, I didn't like that piece, or it troubles me, or it affects me. Never. And I never called them and asked any kind of permission. And onward, we sailed. I'm not saying we've been perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but that kind of independence is in sharp contrast to what you're now seeing at CBS News and 60 minutes and all the rest. And in record time, in record time, Ellison's and Barry Wise and the new person at 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, have lobbed enormous grenades into the most respected, the most venerated TV news show in the history of

the medium, 60 Minutes. I mean, there must be a gold medal for that. James in Manhattan is going to bring us back as we near the end of the segment to where we kind of started on a more unifying note, which was that tonight is game one of the NBA championship series with the Knicks against the San Antonio Spurs. James in Manhattan, you're at WN.R.C. Hi, James. Hey, how are you? Nice to talk to you guys. Yeah, just real quick, an interesting thing to me is to link to Mamdani and the Knicks in a sense. I've been seeing all these comments of people from making comments about how now you're going to go down new york's

going to go down the drain people are leaving the city and drove droves on the internet on the internet etc etc and the answer is so much fun to watch the new york is coming out of the woodwork to say stand up for their city and to say i live here and that is not happening we love our mayor uh and at the same time uh this is a beautiful time to be a mom dani fan a new york city fan and a nix fan because around the city right now with any Knicks hat on, a shirt or whatever, and you will have 50 conversations before you get down the corner. The experience of watching these Knicks in a bar with 100 people all sharing the same emotion, all just loving New York City. It's just been such a joy, and I just wanted to add that. I totally agree. And at the same time, I would say

the nature of New York and the nature of Americanism is argument. I think. that and what I love about Brian's show and what I love about the best of this country is, is engagement and argument that's in good faith. And part of what I miss so deeply, without valorizing other eras and being stupidly innocent about them, what, you know, part of what makes me so enraged so often, with the current administration is the utter bad faith, argument that is not argument, but rather conspiracy theory, and just absolute falsehood and just bad faith from beginning to end

and greed and all the rest of it. What I love about the NICS is not just the escapism and the beauty of the game and the excitement of it. I love all the arguments. You know, I'm not immune from sports. podcasts and what, you know, call-in shows and first time, long time, and all that kind of nonsense, too. It's a nice little escape for the brain, but it also has a meaning. And James, to your point about bringing people together, I have a Knicks cap that have had for a long time, wear it around once in a while.

Normally it's just, you know, I'm a guy walking down the street. Now, last few weeks, people see me in the Knickscap, strangers, and they go, go New York, go, or something like that. And so it's a moment. If I could add one little detail, my wife and I went to the fantastic dance parade two weekends ago down 6th Avenue, which was just tremendous. And I was filming part of it with my phone. And a woman dancer, she was dancing along with the parade had full Nick's regalia on. And she heard me yell, go New York, Nick. And she came over and danced in front of the camera as the band went by for 30 seconds or so.

And again, just those kind of moments in New York City that you need sometimes. James, thank you very much. We have three minutes before David Remnick turns into a pumpkin. I'm going to slip in a media call here with Mick and Park Slope. Mick, try to do it in 30 seconds. Hi. Sure. Hey, David, just a quick question.

What's your thoughts on just the future of journalism? I know it's a huge question, especially local journalism. How are they going to survive? People don't want to pay. Does government need to do subsidy? know that would ever happen, but what's your thoughts on that? I'm just hearing for local journalism, Mick? Yeah, local journalism, hyper-local newspapers.

You know, there's no more resources. Their funding's gone. How are we going to survive this? How's that going to happen? I think that's a great question because we're a very large country, and it is obvious that, you know, newspapers that are smaller, or websites that are smaller have gotten smaller still all the time because of, the diminishment of advertising, Google and Facebook, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And as a result, in the old days, at their best, those papers were what put pressure on power. And it's why the corrupt judge went to jail or the corrupt police commission or got in trouble. And without that pressure on civic power, state power, local power, you are a poorer democracy. And I'm sorry. And I think this is part of what you're going to talk about. with John Lovett at Tribeca next week, but does the pressure, but wait,

does the pressure from a Joe Rogan, from Potsave America, from Hassan Piker on Twitch, pick your one, replace that? No, no, because that's commentary, which has its place and its value.

But what I value most of all in this picture is reporting the discovery of material you did not know or points of view that you you were unaware of, pictures of lives that you cannot see in your daily life, reporting. And that's hard work. It's expensive. And it requires people of experience and skill. It's not just gassing off at a microphone, which, you know, again, has value. God knows I do it myself at times. We're doing it now. And conversation is important in a democracy, but reporting is something of extraordinary value in a democracy, and the less of it there is, the poorer we are.

David Remnick, always good to talk. Thanks for coming on today. Always a pleasure.