Former New York Times boss slams the paper for its "narcissistic" TV projects

The Daily Beast

The Times was recently the subject of Showtime's The Fourth Estate docuseries that delved into its coverage of President Trump. Last month, The Times revealed that it is "going Hollywood" and getting "serious about TV" with the transformation of its podcast The Daily into a docuseries for FX and Hulu called The Weekly. Also, earlier this month it was announced that The Times' Modern Love column will become an anthology series for Amazon. Jill Abramson, The Times' first female executive editor serving from 2011 to 2014, wonders if all this TV "narcissism" is one of the reasons why the paper missed a huge story: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's surprise primary win against the powerful Democratic House member Joe Crowley on Tuesday (the paper didn't dedicate a single article to Ocasio-Cortez's campaign). Abramson hasn't watched The Fourth Estate, and she declined to participate in the 2011 documentary Page One on The Times. In an email to The Daily Beast, Abramson slammed the "new TV show plan to focus on personal feelings and experiences of NYT journalists covering news. More narcissism: It’s always about us. Yikes. Distance is part of journalism’s discipline. They need a course correction. Am I wrong?”