Cousins expound on future of New York Times, print

The New York Times’s A.G. Sulzberger, Sam Dolnick and David Perpich, cousins and Ochs-Sulzberger heirs, appeared together Oct. 9 at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit, held at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles.

Sulzberger is the paper’s publisher, Dolnick an assistant managing editor and Perpich general manager and president.

The trio talked about succession at the paper and the future of newspapers in general to former Time managing editor and former Under Secretary of State Rick Stengel, Vanity Fair reported. 

“Advertising will never be enough to pay for quality journalism,” said Sulzberger. “Our pivot to saying that we need to have a direct relationship with consumers . . . has been essential.”

The Trump presidency has helped the paper on the business side, according to the panel of cousins. “Obviously, Trump is the biggest story out there right now, and of our lifetime possibly, so people are turning to the news to make sense of the world,” said Perpich. “The thing that we see is that, yes, there was this surge of interest, but there’s been a sustained increase in subscriptions as we’ve gone and invested in journalism in all the different areas we do. Did it help? Sure. But is it the answer? No.”

Sulzberger addressed the state of the print newspaper. “I think the [print] newspaper has a much longer life than any of us suspect,” said Sulzberger. “Where the three of us are totally united is that we are moving as fast as we can to get to a future in which we don’t need to rely on that newspaper at all. The time will come when this is a digital-only news organization.”

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