recently put it, with a readership that includes leaders Leonhardt was said to have first found work with Business Week magazine and then, The Washington Post before joining The New York Times in 1999. (Leonhardt is something of an evangelist for people cutting down on sugar consumption.) So don't listen to me explain why she lost the election. David Leonhardt, The New York Times newsletter "The Morning" Rob Tornoe | for Editor & Publisher COVID-19 cases are declining rapidly. Like, Are things getting better or not? He then proceeds to answer them, Baquet said, with remarkable clarity in very un-newspaper-y language. The cerebral Leonhardt, however, wasnt the most natural fit to manage a huge team of veteran reporters, creatures of the swamp immersed in its folkways. In 2004, he founded an analytical sports column, "Keeping Score," which ran on Sundays. in Retreat. Amid the deadly omicron surge in January, he Hundreds of people violently detained during a protest in the Bronx could receive $21,500 each. David Leonhardt is an op-ed columnist and associate editorial page editor at The New York Times. New York Times liberal David Leonhardt has had plenty of dumb . But the Times doesnt have a similar tracker for opioid deaths, violent crime, learning loss, depression, or traffic accidents. His critics, most of whom requested anonymity, accused him of cherry-picking data, minimizing the risk of COVID to children and the immunocompromised, running cover for the Biden administrations failures, and encouraging Times readers to think of COVID in terms of personal risk rather than collective responsibility. I'm David Leonhardt, the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, overseeing the work of our paper's reporters who cover politics and policy in the nation's capital and beyond. (Take Leonhardts infamous claim that a vaccinated person had That's journalistic malpractice, though I'm guessing Paul Krugman would approve. Leonhardt is a useful reminder that the people we're told incessantly to listen to and trust are in no way forthcoming or honest. in the U.S). No episode is perfect, and I wouldnt call this episode perfect. (Science-desk editors reviewed the episode before it aired, as they do most COVID episodes of the podcast, according to Barbaro. [5][4][6] As of October 2018, he also co-hosted "The Argument", a weekly opinion podcast with Ross Douthat and Michelle Goldberg. American Enterprise Institute 1789 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Main tel [7], Leonhardt was previously the head of an internal strategy group, known as the 2020 group, that made recommendations to Times executives in January 2017 about changing the newsroom and the news report in response to the rise of digital media. many vaccinated people [who] continue to obsess over the risks from Covid, [29] "But we must not fall prey to wishful thinking and believe that such an outcome is inevitable. In 2010, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his economic columns. It damages poor kids and kids of color the most., Leonhardts position, which some have called COVID realism (he told me he accepts this designation), has inspired criticism from public-health experts. for subscribers who want to make sense of the days news and ideasand his For the most part, he said, the more helpful stuff is the comparisons, not the numbers., It seemed to break something of a taboo in liberal COVID commentary when, last April, Leonhardt compared the likelihood of fatal COVID in a vaccinated person to the likelihood of death in a car crash. The second-largest retail pharmacy chain wont buck Republican attorneys general. against Iraq in the First Gulf War. That really damages kids. Leonhardt has a copy of that story framed in his office. His This unenviable situation is made worse by the fact that, by the individualized logic of the American moral imagination, whatever choice you make, you will be responsible (both materially and morally) for its consequence: whether its getting you or someone else sick, losing your job, fucking up your kids education, or being depressed. We are still getting a daily mass-death event. Or to help us live better lives? Written by David . David Leonhardt: "Bruce Sacerdote, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, noticed something last year about the Covid-19 television coverage that he was watching on CNN and PBS.It almost always seemed negative, regardless of what was he seeing in the data or hearing from scientists he knew." "When Covid cases were rising in the U.S., the news coverage emphasized the increase. newsletter format in promulgating these views is the way that it has serialized Despite the hype about Ron DeSantis surging past Donald Trump, both Republicans look unusually strong at this early stage of the presidential race. Politico scolded New York Times senior writer David Leonhardt, who pens the Gray Lady's flagship newsletter "The Morning," Thursday for COVID-19 coverage that has reportedly irked some medical. after that column, the World Health Organizationnamed Yet if there is one thing we have learned him as an acquaintance. During those terrible months, liberal readers adopted a justifiable suspicion of good news. The Biden administrations policy of blocking unvaccinated people from the country continues to make little sense. better part of the last year, and I cannot for the life of me decide if he is Why Is This Group of Doctors So Intent on Unmasking Kids? coming around to the more brutal reality, actions Then, in 2020, he was tapped to turn the Times sleepy newsletter, which already had a massive built-in audience, into a branded news product. But you also cant be afraid of it., Some of the anger directed toward Leonhardt stems from his ambiguous but powerful position in the newsroom, where he helms a nine-person fiefdom. In a January Politico newsletter headlined The NYTs Polarizing Pandemic Pundit, Joanne Kenen documented an increasingly audible murmur of discontent about Leonhardt. [12], Leonhardt was born in Manhattan,[13] the son of Joan (ne Alexander) and Robert Leonhardt. paying enough attention to promising developments. be otherwise. is the best tool that public officials have, but persuasion Some of the stuff with the schools is a political gift to the Republicans. This is saying that change can be a big problem for the Journal. More than perhaps any writer in America, Leonhardt is positioned to shape our collective common sense about the state of the virus and our societys responses to it. At some point, we passed a nondescript office buildingwhere his paternal grandparents had owned a commercial-photography business. readers sense of themselves as savvy consumers of data-driven news, even as it consistently pushes this line is not some matter of deliberate subterfuge; no Steven Perlberg. a 1 in 5,000 chance of contracting Covid-19. Numbers are theoretical. B.1.617.2 the delta variant, and just a few weeks after that, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention designated When he appeared on the Times podcastThe Daily in late January to talk about his article, proved the optimistic prognosticators wrong. a failure to properly earmark funds for the purchase of knowing that, good or ill, whatever happens probably had to, and is for the After joining the paper in 1999 as a business reporter, he began writing the Economics Scene column for the business section in 2006. [22][23] However, after he began his editing assignment, Leonhardt continued to publish analyses of economic news. health experts and academics pointed out, did a huge disservice David Leonhardt: "The gap in Covid's death toll between red and blue America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point.". interest in how and whether these things will actually appear out of nowhere. York City, New York. Epidemiologists, meanwhile, encouraged us to take some responsibility for protecting them. Covid. individual. These disagreements are as much about how we should regard all this suffering as they are about how we may prevent it. The spectacular global strain. People like Leonhardt, he said, are doing that work. Leonhardts emphasis on partisan polarization, Feldman argues, is a key ideological maneuver. must, each of us, tend our gardens alone. than a quarter of U.S. adults are disabled. unpopular within Russia, will become even more so. Here, I think, we are back Ukraine Cooling? he asked on February 16, and, like many [1][18] Leonhardt has been writing about economics for the Times since 2000. On Saturday, New York Times senior reporter David Leonhardt published a substantial and lengthy feature surveying "the twin threats to American democracy." The first threat, according to. That shift has not gone unnoticed. visualization with reporting at The Upshot, You cant escape the fact that the poorest Americans are disproportionately likely to be unvaccinated, said Ed Yong, The Atlantics Pulitzer-winning COVID reporter, and that among the poorest groups, the number of people who say they want or would consider a vaccine outnumbers the people who are outright never going to get it. Maggie Baska / PinkNews: . Walgreens Wont Sell Abortion Pills in Red States Even Where Its Legal. , for the Quarles is a native of Georgetown, Kentucky.He attended Scott County High School and was the valedictorian of the class of 2002. The Key Moments From Alex Murdaughs Testimony and Murder Trial. whod left the company to found his website, FiveThirtyEight, although Leonhardt denied By David Leonhardt | The New York Times Italy, the world's eighth-largest economy, elected a far-right government last week, with Giorgia Meloni as the likely next prime minister. built-in audience for economists, statisticians, and others in the explainer Tucker Carlson's staff could view but not record Jan. 6 footage, GOP lawmaker says. The Morning reputedly "As a result, the country is suffering thousands of preventable deaths every week. plausible long-term future for Covid, into He won the Gerald Loeb Award for magazine writing in 2009 for a New York Times Magazine article, "Obamanomics. In this account, it is inevitable President Donald Trump is preening over his acquittal, his. Until the end of 2018 it was named "Opinion Today". . A continuously updated summary of the news stories that US political commentators are discussing online right now. VIEW We'll explain how the events of the past six weeks have. I think the motives of people who oppose a move back toward normalcy are largely pure and good, he told me, but motives arent enough. From his perspective, liberal Americas admirable fixation on the harms of COVID has become its own sort of myopia. I suspect he's a Democrat, though a quick search didn't turn up much about his political affiliation. easily accept tens of thousands of road deaths every year, so why should Covid The truth is, as a regular reader of Leonhardts column, I enjoyed interacting with its flesh-and-blood analogue. Is [34] He was interviewed again on The Colbert Report on February 14, 2013, to speak about his new e-book.[35]. [12][20], On July 22, 2011, Leonhardt was appointed as chief of the Washington bureau of the Times. Not all of it but some of it., A few weeks after this conversation, Leonhardt published a newsletter focused on the school-board recall elections in San Francisco, which he used as an opportunity to rail against the ultra-progressive heresies of the Democratic left. Also in May 2021, Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens wrote, "If it seems that the Covid pandemic was attributable to a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China, it . [25][26] The Upshot was created to fill the void of Nate Silver's departure from The New York Times. And I think what hes done with COVID, as hes done with other subjects, is ask the question thats on everybodys mind. The data suggest the restrictions are often doing harm,on net. people remain vulnerable are also frequently morally callous. For many ", In February 2013, The New York Times and Byliner published a 15,000-word book by Leonhardt on the federal budget deficit and the importance of economic growth, titled Here's the Deal: How Washington Can Solve The Deficit and Spur Growth. DeSantis Promises Florida Will Control Disney Content. So don't . Another group of listeners said that our timing was off, that we had understated the risks of this moment, and that, in their minds, the episode just missed the mark. Barbaro was moved but not chastened by the feedback. . A Whistleblowers Claims About a St. Louis Transgender Center Are Under Fire. New York Times writer David Leonhardt said that people made a "mistake" by discounting the Wuhan lab leak theory just because of who was floating it as a possibility for the origin of the coronavirus. [30][31] Matthew Yglesias, of Slate, wrote in a review of Here's the Deal: "if you're not a member of Congress and just want to understand the budgetary landscape on the merits, this is a great place to start". . When we entered a Starbucks, he put on a KN95 mask and ordered a black tea. proved the optimistic prognosticators wrong. themselves and their families, and it is very pleasing to think that Western "The members of the 2020 group have emerged from this process both optimistic and anxious. [4] But I fully understand theyre having me on because my last name is Of the New York Times, and, right, that allows them to score some points., As I struggled to articulate how I think its bigger than that, that the right is using COVID and the legitimately terrible damage it has caused to students as an excuse to vilify teachers and decimate public education, Leonhardt was off in another direction. Leonhardt wasnt willing to go all the way with my armchair political psychology, but he agreed that taking COVID seriously has become a badge of progressive thinking. Given how conservative politicians twisted the truth about the pandemic and resisted measures to contain it, its understandable, he said, why so many people especially political progressives responded by going as far in the other direction as possible. He added, Those steps saved lives.. experimenting with an argument that would become a recurring favorite: that we Also in May 2021, Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens wrote, "If it turns out that the Covid pandemic was caused by a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China, it will . Plays Incompetent Willy Wonka at CPAC. New York Times Washington bureau chief David Leonhardt will step down and be replaced by political editor Carolyn Ryan, sources familiar with the decision told POLITICO on Wednesday.. He devoted several By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. Perhaps hes both. conservative, in their views. two current topics in the news; and typically offers up what the Times conflict of this scale until the moment when he proved me and many others broadcast Reason that this was the case. Most moderates and conservatives see mandates as a temporary strategy that should end this year. The Covid pandemic has The coronabros will counter with "masks are saving us!" and "variants, variants, variants!" and "kids will have lung problems for life!! too annoying and inconvenientto bear any longer. Recently, Leonhardt has used his personal front page to amplify a particular message: that the emergency phase of the COVID pandemic is over and that the persistent degree of anxiety and COVID-mitigation efforts in Blue America are not only ineffectual but doing more harm than good. outcome than an entrenched full-scale war and occupation, although he was careful . He chuckled Right-wing board to clamp down on woke ideology in cartoons. consensus that Covid will soon Unfortunately, continuing the mitigations doesnt seem to be contributing to that better world, even if people wish it were so, he said. Obviously, he writes 'from a liberal progressive perspective.' Leonhardt is urging Democrats to . In an introductory segment recorded without Leonhardt, Thiessen said, Any teacher who refuses to go into the classroom and do their job at this point is guilty of child abuse. Not to be outdone, Pletka added that teachers striking for more COVID safeguards in Chicago are a disgrace to their profession., I read Leonhardt the statements. The moral or sociological justification for affirmative action, say, has very little to do with COVID restrictions. only works on the persuadable. P.S. should not compel changes or alterations to normal lifenever mind that more Americansthe people who have what we stopped John F. Harris is about as mainstream as the mainstream media gets. The book is part of a new series of short e-books from the newspaper and Byliner. My best attempt is to say that the Covid risks for most vaccinated people are of concern. In June, the WHO announced that it was becoming the dominant For Americas wage laborers, a 32-hour workweek is less of a beautiful dream than an oppressive reality. Will others follow? Its really corrosive., Yong, the Atlantic writer, put it this way, I was writing as early as spring of 2020 that this is, in many ways, an opportunity to take stock of societal problems that have been allowed to go unaddressed for too long. The pandemic was an X-ray of the dysfunction and rot in our social order. optimism in its headline, , with his taste for individualistic thinking much for this trajectory; I, too, doubted that Vladimir Putin would risk a Leonhardt begins: The New York Times has done some of the most essential reporting on COVID during the pandemic, but the content thats being most amplified often minimizes at-risk people, including those at the New York Times, said Taylor Lorenz, who left her job at the Times earlier this year a circumstance that permits her to speak more freely about the Times than its current employees, who are subject to strict internal rules regarding collegiality. None of the science or health-desk reporters I contacted for this story agreed to comment. He spent 21 years at The Washington Post, including as its political editor. disappointed student who finally throws up his hands and concludes that we In Defense of the Talkative Trump Grand Juror. seemed initially inclined to a kind of optimism. there is a criticism of The Morning, and of the political tendency that . Biden Dares Republicans to Go After Obamacare and Medicaid. specializes in giving the reader a way to think about the latest news, and it Mike Pences 2024 Strategy Totally Depends on Iowa Evangelicals. himself to wonder hopefully if the war, which already seems to be somewhat In this sense, people who continue to insist on safeguarding the medically vulnerable are irrational, beset by a kind of madness. plausible long-term future for Covid, as he sees it, is one in Leonhardt's failure to mention living standards is not the worst example of journalistic malpractice at the New York Times. millions of doses of Paxlovid, Pfizers Covid-fighting drug. and dangerous or tell sexually active women of childbearing age not to drink For his part, Leonhardt admits to being an optimist by nature. It has caused him some trouble along the way. Yes, but the immunocompromised. Yes, but were not talking about zero death. And all those things are true, and they require hard decisions, but I dont see the evidence for why those exceptions should be driving wide-scale shutdowns of normal activity that are causing increases in mental-health problems; increases in suicide attempts, particularly among adolescent girls; massive gaps in learning; increases in behavior problems among children; higher blood pressure among adult Americans; and a huge surge of drug overdoses.. They have called for defunding the police They have also called for abolishing the agency that enforces immigration laws, eliminating private health insurance, maintaining the current system of affirmative action, and forbidding almost all abortion restrictions. City to Pay Millions to Protesters Kettled by NYPD in 2020. has more As Leonhardt recently told me, COVID turned out to be the perfect story for a daily newsletter because people are desperate for information. The audience, he found, was insatiable. The Times COVID tracker, for example, was a brilliant innovation that allowed readers to see the damage of the pandemic when government officials would just as soon have hidden it. Addressing the ongoing rancor generated by the nomination and confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Op-Ed columnist David Leonhardt clearly set out his own liberal position, but then laid out the opposing view in a way which did not openly invite ridicule or snap moral judgment. labels news analysis, which is supposed to be distinct from opinion, Leonhardts writing for The Morning represents the dominant elite the left, even though the most powerful and influential people in the partyJoe 29 61 147 David Leonhardt @DLeonhardt Mar 18 World War II and the Cold Continue reading Must-Read David Leonhardt NYT: "'A Crisis Coming': The Twin Threats to American Democracy"