What Front-Page Choices Say About The Times’s Priorities

[Commentary] In the digital age, the matter of what stories are picked for front-page display in the print edition may seem archaic. Who cares, one might reasonably ask. But editors still take those daily choices seriously and, because they do, the decisions can provide a useful window into editors’ priorities.

“It’s not a move away from hard news, but more about something that is ‘only in The New York Times,’” said Dean Baquet, a managing editor who runs the afternoon news meeting and usually makes the front page choices. “It has more to do with what we think will interest a sophisticated reader. You can’t get away with giving that reader something they’re already aware of, unless you bring analysis or a different approach.” Something, in short, that makes it exclusive. The Times’s approach – favoring that which is exclusive – has a whiff of something I’ve noted before: The self-satisfied idea that “it’s news when we say it’s news.” But more positively, it offers readers a deeply interesting and original front page, not always driven by the events of the previous day.