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When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the opinion page at The New York Times ran commentaries that vehemently criticized the decision alongside several that supported it—a both-sides approach that spurred outrage in some quarters. 

Kathleen Kingsbury, opinion editor at the Times since 2021, believes that the paper took the right tack. 

“This is the law of the land. People should understand it,” Kingsbury told an audience of 190 at Filene Auditorium on Oct. 21. “They should understand the people who believe that it is the right decision. They should hear from people who are outraged by it. We’re not really having a true public discourse unless people are willing to engage with ideas that might make them uncomfortable.”

Kingsbury was on campus as part of the Law and Democracy: The United States at 250 lecture series, co-sponsored by and the . The ���㽶��Ƶ student newspaper was also a sponsor of Kingsbury’s talk. 

, associate director and senior policy fellow at the Rockefeller Center, and Charlotte Hampton ’26, editor-in-chief of The ���㽶��Ƶ, moderated Kingsbury’s talk.

Kingsbury, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for editorial writing at The Boston Globe, spoke in depth about her role at the “paper of record,” the dramatic changes that have overtaken journalism in the past two decades and, perhaps most challenging, how to restore the public’s trust in the media. 

According to a , Americans’ confidence in the mass media has plummeted. Only 28% of Americans polled expressed a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television, and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. That marked a decline from 40% five years ago, according to the poll. 

When Kingsbury started at the Times in 2017, approximately 50 people worked in the opinion section, she said. Today, the opinion section employs almost 200 people around the world who produce video, audio, graphics, and multimedia journalism. 

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The talk in Filene Auditorium by Kathleen Kingsbury of The New York Times drew 190 people, many of them student journalists. (Photo by Eli Burakian ’00)

She said she hopes that these methods of news gathering and presentation, in which people can see how the Times does its reporting, “helps engender trust and build a relationship with the audience.”

The paper has found, Kingsbury said, that readers or consumers of the news are more engaged by interactive journalism. “We also know the realities of how people consume media is dramatically changing right now. Particularly, younger audiences are looking for video, as opposed to audio or text,” she added. 

Video reporting is a critical component as news organizations “increasingly see YouTube as an important platform for distributing journalism,” Kingsbury said.

Contrary to what one might assume, Kingsbury said, working in opinion involves scrupulous reporting and editing, not only opining. “We publish something pretty much every day that I disagree with, but I think that that is important, and that’s what our mission is,” she said.

While there has been sustained criticism of the all-sides approach to publishing opinion, Kingsbury argued that the Times opinion section has successfully been able to present both sides and also raise concerns about threats to democracy: “There’s no one who’s going to read the New York Times opinion section and not agree that we are consistently raising the alarm about the current administration,” Kingsbury said.

Whether criticism of the Times, or other media, comes from the left, right, or center, it speaks to how mistrust of the media has been exacerbated by the “erosion of local journalism. Trust starts on the local level, and people are not going to be as likely to trust the Times if they haven’t developed that relationship with their local newspaper or local news organization,” Kingsbury said.

Historically, she said, the local newspapers have also been an “important pipeline for talent.” But, the days when a young journalist started at a smaller paper and worked her way up to a regional or national paper, or news organization, are waning. 

To questions from students about how to get into and succeed in journalism, Kingsbury said, “The number one piece of advice that I have if you want to be a professional journalist is, be nimble. Be agile.”

During the talk, in answer to a query from Nachlis, more than two dozen audience members identified themselves as student journalists.

Afterwards, Hailey King ’27, the senior editor at The ���㽶��Ƶ Review, said she respected Kingsbury’s take on the importance of different voices in the opinion section. “I really appreciated this sentiment,” King said. 

As to Kingsbury’s advice to budding journalists, King said she thought it was “a very solid reflection of the state of news today. She’s figured out how to give hope but in a way that didn’t feel forced.”

Gabi Green ’29 said she has friends who read the Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Politico every day. And then there are friends who “will never touch a newspaper or only get information from Instagram,” she said.

Green grew up in a household that subscribes to the print edition of the Times.

“When I tell people that I have the New York Times on my table, people look at me like I’m crazy, because no one consumes information that way anymore,” she said.