The New York Times' new editor will run its biggest newsroom ever — and most outspoken

Joe Kahn takes over next week as executive editor of The New York Times as the newspaper is riding high on a new crop of Pulitzer Prizes, recent acquisitions of the sports site The Athletic and Wordle, and record levels of digital subscriptions.

All Kahn has to do is replace a legend and corral an often contentious newsroom of more than 1,700 journalists — the largest news staff ever boasted by an American newspaper.

"The days when you can appoint an executive editor, and that was the decision-maker — and that person sat at the head of a big table and decided which six stories were going to go on Page 1, and kind of slam down the gavel at the end of that and that was sort of the essence of the job — are over," Kahn said in a recent hourlong interview at The Times' cavernous Manhattan headquarters.

Kahn's two most immediate predecessors were groundbreaking — the first female and African American executive editors in the paper's history. His appointment was logical, long planned and drained of any of the drama that accompanied some earlier transitions.

Kahn joined the paper a generation ago, in 1998, and rose through the ranks as a reporter and international editor. He has served as managing editor, or second-in-command, since 2016 under Dean Baquet, who prepared him as a successor.' controlling family who is its corporate chairman and publisher.