Jim Rutenberg Looks Back on Tenure as NY Times Media Columnist
When Jim Rutenberg began writing the New York Times media column at the start of 2016, on the cusp of Donald Trump’s election, he was inheriting a media landscape from his predecessor, David Carr, that was about to change in ways nobody could have predicted.
“I really thought I’d be writing about the death of news,” Rutenberg recalled in a phone interview with Mediaite. Instead, he found himself reporting more on such abstract but increasingly pressing issues as free speech, objectivity and the rise of disinformation — as Trump’s attacks on the media were beginning to intensify.
This week, the Times announced that Rutenberg is leaving his “Mediator” column behind to become a writer at large, a direction he has been heading in for a while now. During his time as a media columnist, Rutenberg was often taken off his beat to work on deep-dive investigations that involved the intersection of media and politics, and in his new role, he said, he will perform similar duties.
As he moves on from the column, Rutenberg, who is 50, reflected a bit on his time covering the press during one of the most tumultuous periods in American politics.
In many ways, Rutenberg’s past experiences prepared him well for the column. He began working at the Times 20 years ago, after having done stints at the New York Daily News and the New York Observer. He started out on the media beat at the Times, working alongside Carr, the widely-admired, no-nonsense reporter who died unexpectedly in 2015. Rutenberg transitioned to political coverage before returning to the media beat four years ago.
“When I came into the column,” Rutenberg told Mediaite, “I had been away from the media beat for quite a long time, and I got this sort of sobering lecture, here at the building, that ‘you need to understand how things are in terms of the financials and we are just about to go through a really rough period,’ and that suddenly really changed. I guess we could call it the ‘Trump effect.’”
The “Trump effect” suffused seemingly every aspect of journalism — and still appears to. Fresh to the beat, though, Rutenberg often found himself returning to Carr’s “Media Equation” column for inspiration — and couldn’t help but think he was reading about a media environment that was entirely different from the one he now saw.
“There were times when I was doing a story on a subject that he had tackled earlier,” Rutenberg said, “and a lot of those were like the whole world turned upside down from when wrote about it.”
Whereas Carr’s column, “The Media Equation,” was more focused on the business of news, Rutenberg’s became more high-minded and polemical. “I wish I had done more sort of industry-specific columns,” Rutenberg told Mediaite, “but the news was so overwhelming and the threats became so big that that sort of took over the column.”
Rutenberg said he was never at a loss for subjects to write about — the challenge was zeroing in on one topic of many possible ones each week. He is proud that the column took Trump’s threats against the press seriously, he said, “even when he was not being taken seriously as, first, a nominee, and then president.”
“It kind of became a controversial column about objectivity and how reporters should approach him,” Rutenberg mused.
At a certain point, though, Rutenberg’s investigative duties began to take over, and he stepped away from the cadence of weekly columnizing. He also recently returned from book leave, during which time he was working on a narrative history of efforts to undermine the press over the past 50 years. It is due to be released, he said, in early 2021.
It is unclear if the Times is planning to find a replacement for Rutenberg as he moves on from the column. “We have nothing to share,” a spokeswoman told Mediaite in an email.
As the election season gains momentum, Rutenberg is well conditioned to cover the nexus of media and politics, but he is also aware that some unforeseen challenges could yet arise. “I’m ready for anything,” Rutenberg told Mediaite, anticipating that, while the election will be “dominated by misinformation and various online doings,” there are probably some things “that we’re haven’t even thought about that could even be happening under our noses.”
“So my goal is just to be hyper-aware and vigilant of everything going on around me to pick up on the trends before they get away from us,” he added. “But, easier said than done.”
