New York Times Expands Domestic Coverage to… The Suburbs?

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The New York Times is broadening its domestic coverage with the addition of three new beats devoted, respectively, to the suburbs, rural issues and religion — a continuation of an initiative to feature more reporting from areas of the country that the paper has overlooked, according to national editor Marc Lacey, who is leading the effort.

“I view it as pretty exciting and pretty significant that The New York Times is expanding with these really substantive jobs, all of which will be based far from New York City and far from Washington, D.C., where we’re extremely well staffed,” Lacey told Mediaite.

Lacey — a long-serving Timesman who has worked as a White House reporter and as a foreign correspondent — said he has been pushing for this sort of coverage at the paper since he became its national editor a few years ago.

It is as yet unclear where in the country each job will be based, Lacey said, though the suburbs reporter will be placed somewhere in the Southwest — Phoenix, Dallas, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas are possibilities — and the religion reporter will most likely cover the South. Lacey said he intends to make placement decisions based partly on how well candidates make their case for a particular location.

Though the Times already publishes pieces on religion and rural issues along with analyses of suburbia, these new roles represent a push to bring new voices and perspectives into the report, according to Lacey.

The expansion comes as the Times has received increased scrutiny for underestimating Donald Trump’s rise during the 2016 election — an indication, critics have said, that the paper was not in touch with issues resonating with Trump’s supporters. Since the election, the Times has also received criticism for publishing what some have characterized as “parachute journalism” — superficial coverage of a locale produced by a reporter who doesn’t live there.

According to Lacey, however, the new coverage areas are separate from the Times’ political reporting. “This is a desire to deepen our coverage of the country,” Lacey told Mediaite, adding that the journalists who take on the new beats will, unlike campaign reporters, remain where they are for the indefinite future.

Applications for the positions have been flooding in, said Lacey, who announced the job postings on his Twitter account Monday afternoon. He intends to fill the roles as swiftly as possible, he told Mediaite — in a matter of weeks, if possible.

Though the news industry has struggled to stay afloat in recent years, particularly at the local level, where newspapers have been disappearing at a rapid clip, the Times is one of the rare publications to have preserved a robust reporting operation — and according to Lacey, it is not taking its success for granted.

“A lot of what you hear out there is doom and gloom news about the media,” he told Mediaite. “There’s all sorts of journalists out there who were laid off, through no fault of their own, and are looking for jobs — and I hope to hear from some of them for these positions.”