David Remnick on 100 years of the New Yorker, Netflix stardom, and why Trump was late to meet him

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Mixed Signals from Semafor Media

Episode: David Remnick on 100 years of the New Yorker, Netflix stardom, and why Trump was late to meet him
Date: December 5, 2025
Hosts: Max Tawny (Semafor Media Editor), Ben Smith (Semafor Editor-in-Chief)
Guest: David Remnick (Editor-in-Chief, The New Yorker)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the legacy and future of The New Yorker magazine as it celebrates its centenary, centering on a new Netflix documentary chronicling its influence and evolution. Hosts Max Tawny and Ben Smith interview David Remnick, who has served as editor-in-chief since 1998, exploring the magazine’s adaptation to digital, the balance between tradition and innovation, media business models, AI, the current political climate, succession (with a joke about Obama), and reflections on covering and knowing figures like Trump.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. David Remnick’s Reflections on Becoming Editor-in-Chief

• Accidental Ascension: Remnick describes suddenly becoming editor after Tina Brown’s abrupt departure (03:53).
• Lacked prior editing experience; joined from a writing background at The Washington Post.

Quote:
“I was a very, very happy writer...Tina Brown quit...and by Monday morning...I was the editor of the New Yorker. And I had never edited anything. I just knew nothing.” — David Remnick [03:53]

2. Digital Transformation and Business Model Shifts

• Missed Digital Opportunity: Remnick admits the magazine was slow to embrace digital media (05:14).
• Subscription Pivot: Identified the need to shift business focus from advertising to subscriptions, leading to profitability since 2001.

Quote:
“We were too slow to embrace digital media fully. We didn’t understand it culturally at Conde Nast and I would say even at the New Yorker.” — David Remnick [05:14]

• Audience as Community: Emphasizes the unique reader loyalty of The New Yorker.

3. Editorial Philosophy and Audience Relationship

• Remnick believes writing for engaged subscribers hasn’t compromised editorial quality; followers expect the magazine’s “best” and not quick, low-effort takes (08:47).
• Describes resisting digital “hot take” culture, even as the pace quickens online.

4. The Centenary Documentary and Nostalgia

• New Netflix documentary marks 100 years; Remnick reflects on the challenge of honoring history without becoming a “museum of itself” (11:41).

Quote:
“All the time...there’s been an absence of self regard or what my mother would call puppet gazing, you know, looking at your own belly button. But that’s not unhealthy. Once in a blue moon." — David Remnick [11:51]

• Tina Brown’s arrival described as a useful shake-up for the institution (12:33).

5. Succession and the Future

• The succession question is broached, including the offhand “Barack Obama” joke (13:20).
• Remnick stresses the importance of collaboration and leveraging in-house expertise (15:09).

Quote:
“There are people here that know subjects that I have not a clue...It’s a collaborative piece of business, although there’s an element of leadership and ultimately saying yes or no to certain kinds of things and judgment and taste, even that is a collaborative thing.” — David Remnick [15:09]

6. Artificial Intelligence in the Newsroom

• Discusses AI-generated voice narration for articles, acknowledging its rapid improvement and utility for audio consumption (18:30).
• Remnick is “idealistic enough” to believe true literary quality and reporting can’t be easily replicated by AI (20:20).

7. Competing in the Modern Media Landscape

• Contrasts The New Yorker’s “stately” pace and depth with the Atlantic's faster, newsier approach (21:21).
• Sees value in different models; maintains The New Yorker’s identity.

Quote:
“It does strike me that the Atlantic sort of feels to me like it’s edited by people who are on Twitter and the New Yorker feels like it’s edited by people who are not on Twitter.” — Ben Smith [22:37]

8. On Social Media and Twitter

• Remnick reflects on his decision to avoid Twitter and social media for his own well-being (22:49).
• Anecdote about searching his own name and seeing wild accusations—calls Twitter “a toilet” (22:52, 00:00).

Quote:
“I made two really, really good decisions in my life. I married the right person the first time around and I didn’t go on Twitter.” — David Remnick [00:00, 22:52]

9. Politics, Biden, and the Challenge of Age

• Ben questions whether The New Yorker missed the “Biden aging” story; Remnick admits they weren’t “realistic enough,” in part because of the overshadowing Trump threat (26:49).
• Recognizes cultural shifts: Obama-era centrism now seems outdated to younger audiences.

10. Liberalism, Honesty, and Institutional Identity

• Remnick defends humane liberalism as a guiding principle, emphasizing openness to internal debate and argument as essential to self-honesty (29:27).
• Describes personal commitment to this tradition, while recognizing changing perceptions.

11. Reflections on Highs, Lows, and Press Freedom

• High points: Pride in major investigations and delightful literary pieces (e.g., a story on pigeon feet), which lift him out of “Trump era gloom” (32:06).
• Low point: Current threat to democratic institutions and press freedom in the US.

Quote:
“This is a low point...I’ve never seen in my lifetime democratic institutions and the press and freedom of speech so endangered." — David Remnick [32:06]

12. Anecdotes: Trump Meeting

• Shares a story of Trump arriving late to an editors’ meeting because he was in the hallway tweeting insults at Arnold Schwarzenegger (“The Apprentice”)—illustrating Trump’s brand obsession (34:25).

13. Reflections on the Documentary and Editing

• Would have preferred more spotlight on writers, artists, and editors, and less on himself in the Netflix doc (36:05).

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On not joining Twitter:
  “It would have made me feel shitty all the time...now it’s like a toilet.” — David Remnick [00:00, 22:52]

• On New Yorker reader loyalty:
  “Our readers want us at our best. They don’t want us to be a hot take factory.” — David Remnick [08:47]

• On business model pivot:
  “What was obvious is that we had to...shift from our emphasis from advertising to subscriptions. And I was right about that.” — David Remnick [07:55]

• On AI and audio:
  “It didn’t sound like a robot...it sounded pretty damn good. And it’s nearly instantaneous in its production.” — David Remnick [18:30]

• On editorial decision-making:
  “It’s a collaborative piece of business, although there’s an element of leadership and ultimately saying yes or no...” — David Remnick [15:09]

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Important Timestamps

• Becoming editor: 03:32–05:07
• Digital transformation/business: 05:14–07:55
• Subscriber/audience relationship: 08:00–10:26
• Museum of itself / Nostalgia: 11:01–12:45
• Succession discussion: 13:01–15:09
• AI & audio in the newsroom: 18:30–21:14
• Atlantic comparison: 21:21–22:37
• Social media avoidance: 22:49–23:56
• Political coverage; Biden era: 26:27–29:13
• Future of liberalism: 29:13–30:20
• Personal/professional highs and lows: 32:06–33:56
• Trump meeting anecdote: 34:25–35:33
• Editing the documentary: 36:05–36:37

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Episode Tone

• Candid and humorous: Remnick’s dry wit and frankness shine, with playful ribbing about headphones, successorship, and Twitter.
• Reflective: On newsroom culture, legacy, the perilous state of media freedom, and the continuing relevance of traditional liberalism.
• Collegial: Interplay between hosts and Remnick, with jokes about Ben Smith becoming bored quickly and the fine art of editor management.

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For the Listener

Whether you’re a media professional, New Yorker enthusiast, or just podcast curious, this episode offers an inside look at one of journalism’s last great institutions, openly discussing the pressures and opportunities of legacy, the digital shift, leadership, AI, and staying relevant in a changing world. Remnick’s candidness and thoughtful perspectives make the episode a compelling listen, especially for those interested in the invisible choices shaping what ends up on the page.

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Transcript

[David Remnick]

But I made two really, really good decisions in my life. I married the right person the first time around and I didn't go on Twitter. I would have looked at it too much. It would have made me feel shitty all the time. I can get that elsewhere. And now it's like a toilet. It's horrible. People going on it and feeling bad about some bot in Germany calling you responsible for the Kennedy assassination. Since insanity. It's insanity.

[Max Tawny]

Welcome to another episode of Mixed Signals from us here at Semaphore. I'm Max Tawny. I'm the media editor here at Semaphore and with me, as always, recording in the evening. This time we usually record during the daytime is our editor in chief, Ben Smith. Ben, is it weirder recording at night?

[Ben Smith]

I'm in a windowless box, as always, Max. So I don't even know what time it is.

[Max Tawny]

It's a Las Vegas casino style atmosphere. It could be any time.

[Ben Smith]

That is what podcasting is like.

[Max Tawny]

Our guest here is perhaps what my notes are saying is the greatest editor of his generation. Sorry, Ben. David Remnick, he's the editor in chief of the New Yorker and we're having him on the show today because there is a new Netflix documentary out this week chronicling the hundred year anniversary of the New Yorker, which just happened earlier this year. I guess they're celebrating it all year. And David is the one of the protagonists of obviously of the documentary, having been editor in chief of the New Yorker for almost three decades now. The documentary follows him around and chronicles the magazine at some key moments last year, including on election night 2024. They had some cameras in the office. It's pretty interesting stuff. Ben, you're an editor in chief as well. You've known David for a long time. David's kind of a friend of Semaphore's. He's shown up at a few of our events. He's an interesting guy, picks up the phone when we give him a call. What are you interested in asking David about this week?

[Ben Smith]

Well, I mean, I think the real big question for the New Yorker is they've got this incredible legacy, this successful business, but there's something also steeped in nostalgia about this, particularly about the documentary. And I think I really want to ask sort of how do you balance that past and the future? And what does the next hundred years look like?

[Max Tawny]

We'll ask David about the relationship between sentimentality and nostalgia, how important it is in today's media landscape. And he's actually a few minutes early, so why don't we bring him in right after this break?

[Ben Smith]

There's new content waiting for you on Think with Google that you won't want to miss. Think is the destination for marketers to access things like first of its kind research on AI adoption with the Boston Consulting Group, insights on four key consumer behaviors, streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping and deep dives on emerging technology and strategies that drive real growth. Get all of that and more by heading to thinkwithgoogle.com.

[David Remnick]

Ben, you got the good newsroom clock behind you too.

[Max Tawny]

Manny, our excellent producer, set the room up for us, which is it's nice.

[David Remnick]

And you don't wear headphones because of aesthetics.

[Ben Smith]

I have the cool in your ear, ones that like Jon Favreau wears on crooked.

[Max Tawny]

But see, when I go, when I'm in that studio, I wear the headphones because I like the he doesn't want.

[Ben Smith]

To share my earwax that for one.

[Max Tawny]

But Ben is convinced that in a few years it's going to look very like of this specific to have the headphones over.

[Ben Smith]

You just don't need giant headphones.

[David Remnick]

We in radio call them cans. Max.

[Ben Smith]

Yes, it is. It is truly an affectation. Yeah, yeah.

[Max Tawny]

But it's nice though, and you get the good sound quality anyway.

[Ben Smith]

All right, David, thanks so much for joining us.

[David Remnick]

My pleasure.

[Ben Smith]

So you started this job in July of 1998, and I wonder, you start a job like this and you presumably have some plans, theories about the future. And I wonder if you could begin by taking us back to July 98 and tell us, like, what were you most right about and what were you most wrong about in whatever memo you wrote Cy Newhouse to get the job?

[David Remnick]

You know, as you remember, or maybe remember through the mists of time, what happened was Tina Brown quit pretty abruptly, or at least it seemed very abruptly to all of us at the New Yorker. And I was a very, very happy writer. I had come from the Washington Post and this was heaven to me. Heaven. And just all of a sudden she went off to start this thing called Talk magazine with Harvey Weinstein, which I think Tina talks about in pretty hilarious terms today as maybe not the best decision in the world. But there was no editor, no editor whatsoever. There was no contingency plan. There was no succession plan. There was no nothing. And by Monday morning, this was, I guess, Wednesday or Thursday. I was the editor of the New Yorker. And I had never edited anything. I just knew nothing. So I couldn't have anticipated so much. I mean, at that point we were sending emails, but we weren't in the digital media revolution in the thick of it that was not quite imagined yet. And certainly Conde Nast wasn't an avatar of this. We put out a print magazine with 12 pieces, gag cartoons and a cover. That's what we did. And that's what we had done for three quarters of a century, you know, and everything was ahead.

[Max Tawny]

But to get back to, I think the question that Ben was asking, what were you the most wrong about and the most right about?

[David Remnick]

Well, I was the most wrong about. We were too slow to embrace digital media fully. We didn't understand it culturally at Conde Nast and I would say even at the New Yorker, although at a certain point, and really had to kind of push and push and push for a pretty modest investment in just starting a website. As if this was some incredibly radical.

I was right about the business, though I don't mind saying. What happened was there was a post war boom from 1945 to the late 60s, and the new Yorker was beautifully situated to reap all this advertising money, right? It had an audience that was educated, it was buying stuff, and advertisers knew they could reach a kind of.

Well to do, aspiring readership. And William Shawn's most difficult editorial challenge.

Was to find enough editorial material to put next to the endless ads running through the course of the magazine.

This peaked in 1967, 1968, and it started to slope down for all kinds of reasons, ranging from competition in television, other publications, the Vietnam War, maybe an increasingly political New Yorker, which becomes a little less, I love this term, brand safe for advertisers. So by the time I came around, which was the late 90s, advertising was sloping down, sloping down. We were certainly losing money. And I would go to meetings. I knew so little about business, Ben, in my first meeting, I thought we were making money. And somebody had to tell me the parenthesis around the number meant something far darker. I was pathetic. I majored in comparative literature, after all. But what struck me immediately was that we had this loyal audience that thought of itself as New Yorker readers. It was almost like a community, and they were paying a very small amount for a subscription. And I would go to these meetings and say, well, why don't we charge more? Because I did take econ 101, you know, supply and demand. And he said, oh, no, that that would affect advertising in an adverse way. What was obvious is that we had to, like the New York Times and like a number of places have tried, shift from our emphasis from advertising to subscriptions. And I was right about that. My colleagues were right about that.

And the evolution of the business grew out of that.

[Max Tawny]

How do you think that that shapes the kind of work that you put out and the kind of people who are reading the New Yorker? Certainly it was a smart business decision, but I think Ben and I have thought about this and discussed it on the podcast. And of course we still at Semaphore, we're an advertising and events business. We don't charge for subscriptions yet. But leaning into.

[David Remnick]

But you want to, you want to reach a point where you've got the readership and. And readership loyalty, I assume. Am I guessing wrong, Max, that you want to.

[Ben Smith]

At some point we're gonna leave it to Max.

[Max Tawny]

Yeah, we should. That's a good idea. That is a good idea. But seriously though, looking inward and writing for your subscribers, does that change the editorial product or what the New Yorker is?

[David Remnick]

I think not. But you know what? I can't account for the unconscious. Only Freud and his heirs could do that. A lucky thing is that our readers, I sense, and you can only sense these things want us at our best. They don't want us to be a hot take factory. They don't want us to be fast and dirty. And believe me, there were either outside or self imposed pressures along the way. Trying to wonder what to do, particularly with the metabolism of the web. Right. I remember the incredible drama the New York Times went through in their conversion to a digital newspaper. The Innovation Report, the arguments, the screaming and yelling. Arguably people came and went. Based on how they fared in that drama, I would say that it was even more difficult for us because we were built around a certain metabolism that was built around the weak and not just the weak, but. But a pretty damn stately approach to time and investment of time. So Tina Brown, innately just by her nature, injected. I think more vigor and a pulse here. And I was all with her on that. I mean I came from a newspaper background, but I think I don't find myself over worrying this. I think we're in a very lucky place. When we are at our best, that's exactly what our audience wants. How do I know this? I don't go around and check anybody's brain waves, but that's what I intuit.

[Max Tawny]

So give us a sense of the size of the New Yorker these days. How many subscribers do you guys have and how much money are you guys making or not making?

[David Remnick]

Well, Ben knows only too well that I'm not going to answer that question because we're in a private company and we don't answer it. We're profitable.

Happily so. It was a very good year. And, you know, I started in 98 by 2001, with the partnership of the publisher. We went into the black by 2001 and we've been there ever since.

[Ben Smith]

And you're on a sort of minor media tour at the moment. Cause there's a documentary out in New Yorker at 100, which I really enjoyed and learned.

[David Remnick]

Oh, good.

[Ben Smith]

I would say it felt just a little bit like the video you watched at somebody's funeral. And it reminded me, I mean, the sort of most biting critique of the New Yorker is this 19th century, 1965 Tom Wolf piece I'm sure you're familiar with, called Tiny Mummies, the True Story of The ruler of 43rd Street's land of the Walking Dead, which for people.

[David Remnick]

Who haven't read it, and the tweeness. And he was making fun also of William Shawn, who was a very, very brilliant editor, maybe arguably the best editor of the 20th century, but had certain habits that were easy to poke fun at. You know, he couldn't be in an elevator by himself, couldn't go for bridges and.

[Ben Smith]

But I think the core critique of it really was that the New Yorker had become a museum of itself.

[David Remnick]

Yep, absolutely.

[Ben Smith]

Do you ever worry about that? That the New Yorker becomes a monument to itself?

[David Remnick]

All the time. And I don't think in a centenary year that there's been an absence of self regard or what my mother would call puppet gazing, you know, looking at your own belly button. But that's not unhealthy. Once in a blue moon. And you know, we reached 100 years of healthy, incredible journalism. A little self celebration of the institution. Not the worst thing in the world. I think one of the salubrious things that Tina accomplished was to come in as an outsider, something of an outsider, as a Brit, somebody who didn't have New Yorker religion and kind of shake things up and get some of the dust off the couch. And that rattled people and some people walked away.

And some of them that walked away. It was unfortunate. And I got a couple to come back. You know, Sandy Frazier was one. Ian Fraser, they were unnerved by this cultural change.

[Ben Smith]

Do you think that your successor should be a rattler or should be a continuity person?

[David Remnick]

Well, it's not something I stay up thinking about a hell of a lot. Ben, you're responsible for raising this subject first a couple of years ago, because I had reached a birthday, actually, to.

[Max Tawny]

Be clear, this was me.

[David Remnick]

I know Ben well enough to know he whispered, ben enjoyed the song.

[Max Tawny]

I enjoy the subject.

[David Remnick]

I think, no, Ben has great story sense and he clearly saw me turning 65. And they give you this great subway discount, which is absolutely fantastic. And who did you say Barack Obama was gonna.

[Max Tawny]

Okay, so that was me. We talked about who the possible successor is.

[David Remnick]

I don't think he wants to work that hard.

[Max Tawny]

I don't think so either because I anticipated that you might bring this up because we did mention Barack Obama in the piece as kind of a joke of. There are very few people who are really qualified to do this job. And my point about Obama was, what has he done in his post presidency that has been as impactful as putting out the New Yorker and winning. Doing these investigations and winning these Pulitzer Prizes. He's making Netflix documentaries and podcasts for Spotify. So it's not totally out of the question. He's very interested in media and, you know, if he still wants to make it, believe that.

[David Remnick]

Do you believe his lists?

[Max Tawny]

I think I.

[David Remnick]

Music lists. They, they. And I say this with all due respect, as I say in the Sopranos, there's a little bit of a whiff of going to your kids and going, okay, absolutely, absolutely. Fill in the blanks. I'll give you the Aretha Franklin. You tell me.

[Max Tawny]

I did ask Eric Schultz, one of his longtime comms people, about this when I was at Politico.

[David Remnick]

Oh, he insists on. It's true.

[Max Tawny]

He insists that it's true. I was more interested in like, what's the lobbying process behind people trying to shape what shows up on his list. I know publishers are trying to get stuff on to his best books of the year. And that, that's like, that's a real kind of target.

[David Remnick]

But Ben, don't you want see Trump's.

[Ben Smith]

Lists, his reading lists?

[David Remnick]

Yeah, I want to see his reading list and the music list. What gives Donald Trump joy?

[Max Tawny]

Golf.

[Ben Smith]

I feel like we see it all the time.

[Max Tawny]

Golf, golf championships, making fun of other.

[David Remnick]

People, humiliation, accolades and awards.

[Max Tawny]

I think probably.

[David Remnick]

Good point. I think it's a Nobel Peace Prize for sure.

[Ben Smith]

Cameras. Remember Zoron? He noticed all the cameras and was.

[Max Tawny]

So pleased to Ben's question, though, because we were going to get to the succession at some point, but we might as well get to it now. You've been editing the New Yorker now for getting close to three decades. Let's round up a little bit. I mean, this has got to be something. Something obviously that you think about. And what would make one qualified, do you think, to.

[David Remnick]

Well, to be their own person, to Go back to your original question. That person has to realize that this is a collaborative piece of business. Never more so than now because of what it takes in. There are people here that know subjects that I have not a clue. And you're talking to someone who dissected a frog. And that was the end of their scientific career. And my mathematics career ended. You know, the day I got into college, I quit calculus because I didn't feel that I was ever going to need to understand how to find the area under the curve. So there are people here that are way better at all kinds of things than me. It's a collaborative piece of business, although there's an element of leadership and ultimately saying yes or no to certain kinds of things and judgment and taste, even that is a collaborative thing. Look at fiction, Max. It's an important part of the New Yorker. It might not be the thing that people. Every reader reads. Absolutely. But there are people. That's why they read the New Yorker, the literary side of it. And the fiction editor has read thousands more novels than I have now. After she and the fiction department, three people, and come up with the stories that they want to publish, they send me all of them with the convenient fiction that I'm choosing. Well, I'm not really. They've chosen among hundreds of stories, but if once in a while one out of the four strikes me as incomprehensible three times longer than it might be or something, I'll say something. But really the decision is being made. The important part of the decision is being made by Deborah Treisman, Willing Davidson and Cressid Elysian. Same with poetry. Same with a lot of things. So cartoons even. I have this cartoon meeting once a week. Emma Allen comes in with a stack of, I don't know, 40 or 50 cartoons, but she's narrowed it down from over a thousand.

[Max Tawny]

This is one thing that I actually really like about Ben is that he gets so bored with things so often that we have these ideas and we think they're great, and then we think they're great for a month. And then after the month it's kind.

[Ben Smith]

Of like, eh, this is why I would be the worst possible editor of the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

Let me ask you a question, Max. Do you tell Ben we're not doing it?

[Max Tawny]

I like the challenge of how to make Ben interested in something that he might not be interested in.

[David Remnick]

Well, for example, when he told you to write about my successor, are you a little pissed off that I'm still here two years later?

[Ben Smith]

I actually think this is Max's.

[Max Tawny]

Fault. Just to be clear. It actually was.

[David Remnick]

If you not brought it up, I would have been long gone.

[Max Tawny]

Yeah. No, but it's one of those things where you also, you learn editor management as well, which is I know that I don't bring a good idea to Ben unless I know that I actually want to do it. If I don't want to do it and it's a good, you know, it might get stuck in his brain, he might ask me about it later.

[David Remnick]

Well, we have a different. On Tuesdays, we have this four o' clock ideas meeting. And some of the people that are there are a steady cast, you know, Daniel Zalevsky and a couple others. But we always rotate in a fact checker to a copy editor. People who don't are normally doing X, Y or Z jobs, but they're bringing something to the table, whether it's a, you know, a band that they're listening to or something that they read in the paper that seemed odd and worthy of deeper investigation and stuff comes out of that all the time.

[Max Tawny]

So I want to go back to something that you mentioned earlier, which, as you said, it's been one of the best years for the New Yorker in, in some time. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? What's driving that?

[David Remnick]

Well, subscriptions. Subscriptions. But the centenary was an opportunity for focus. You know, it's like a birthday. At a certain point in your life, you maybe sit back and think, let's make sure that we're accomplishing X, Y or Z and that we're thinking about the future in certain ways and that we get smart people in a room to raise uncomfortable questions about all kinds of things. You know, I get asked all the time about AI for example, what are you going to do about AI? As if this is something that there's a right answer to and it's a singular answer to. Well, one thing that we're doing that uses AI that helps us a lot is that it's pretty common wisdom now that a lot of people, instead of reading a lot, they're listening a lot. They listen to books, they listen to articles. And if you are trying to get an actor, a voice actor to come in and read everything in the New Yorker, you're gonna fall behind really quickly. And one day, Monica Racik and Julia Rothschild, two terrific people on the staff, editors came in, said, want you to hear this. And they took out their phone and played somebody reading such and such a piece. So I said, yeah, that's so what? And it didn't sound like a robot. And it didn't sound like something from Star wars or Lost in Space or something like that. It sounded pretty damn good. And it's nearly instantaneous in its production. And I knew that there would be some people who would complain, oh, it's not a hu. It doesn't have the warmth or roundedness of a human voice or mispronounces this or that. By the way, so do people sometimes. But it gets better and better all the time, and it allows us to get these pieces into people's ears well nigh immediately. So that's great. I also think, as we advance into the AI universe, whatever that may be, I'm idealistic enough to think, and I think I'm right, that there is no substitute for or ready imitation of the best of human storytelling and language and elegance and accuracy and originality. I don't think Sam Altman is dreaming that one up. I really don't. I think there are loads and loads of uses for AI Some of them beneficial, as with the medical aspect of things. Some of them will be be game changers in offices, as with writing legal letters or all kinds of other things. I may be wrong, and I certainly don't have all the answers, but at this point.

That'S how I'm looking at AI so we have conversations like this and bring in people that know what the hell they're talking about, as opposed to yours truly.

[Ben Smith]

Some of your competitors are taking kind of a different approach to this moment, which is. And I'm really thinking of the Atlantic, which is really like playing much harder in the news cycle.

[David Remnick]

Yep.

[Ben Smith]

Hired a bunch of Washington reporters from your alma mater, the Washington Post.

[David Remnick]

I think Jeff must have hired half the Washington Post.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah, it's given the thing both more speed, more political edge, and just more volume. I mean, there's a bigger presence in the conversation.

[David Remnick]

I think what Jeff is doing, and I don't want to speak for him, but, you know, I do look at him as with admiration and as a competitor too. And I've, you know, Jeff used to write for the New Yorker, and I know him very well and admire him, but I think what Jeff is doing, he certainly has. There are some long pieces that contribute to the monthly, 12 times a year, Atlantic, and then on a daily basis. You're right, there's like a kind of reported op ed approach, and there are many of them, and that is one approach, but it's not ours.

[Ben Smith]

What's the downside of that?

[David Remnick]

Well, I think the upside is he's filling A space that, among others, the Washington Post, the LA Times are not stronger than they were a year or two or three ago. I mean, there's no question about it. The downside. There's no downside. It's just. It's different. It's like the downside of red as opposed to blue. It's just different. The New Yorker is a very different animal.

[Ben Smith]

It does strike me that the Atlantic sort of feels to me like it's edited by people who are on Twitter and the New Yorker feels like it's edited by people who are not on Twitter.

[David Remnick]

I don't know Twitter.

[Ben Smith]

What is your relationship with social media? I mean, Twitter. Long, dark.

[David Remnick]

I think I've said this to you before, Ben. I made two really, really good decisions in my life. I married the right first time around and still married to her, Esther Fine. And I didn't go on Twitter. And I remember David Carr of sainted memory making endless fun of me for not going on Twitter. Maybe you did too. As if this was the insignia of cluelessness. And I have to say, I would have looked at it too much. It would have made me feel shitty all the time. I can get that elsewhere. And now it's like a toilet. It's horrible, people going on it and feeling bad about some bot in Germany calling you responsible for the Kennedy assassination, since insanity. It's insanity. Once in a blue moon, I'll confess. I'll go on and I'll punch in and see what are they saying about Remnick and literally the Kennedy assassination. And it's just, what is this mess?

[Ben Smith]

But you have enough of whatever that weird personality flaw we all have is that you occasionally search your own name on Twitter. I mean, that is dangerous.

[David Remnick]

I make these confessions to you, Ben, as if in a Catholic church, nice Jewish boy visiting Notre Dame.

[Max Tawny]

Well, we have a lot more that we want to get to with David, but we have to take a short break. So we'll be right back after this.

[Ben Smith]

In this week's branded segment from Think with Google, I spoke with Google's VP of marketing, Josh Spanier, about the dynamic between CMOs and CFOs as marketing evolves. What's something successful CMOs have in common?

[Josh Spanier]

Move over, Travis and Taylor. The hot couple in marketing today is that CMO CFO partnership. It's kind of really interesting that CMOs are thought to be got rid of very, very quickly within the C suite. A new study just came out showing that CFOs are lasting about four months longer than CMOs. So your chief financial officer needs help as well. The partnership of CMOs and CFOs is really, really helping. We just actually hosted a event at Google where we had 30 CFOs come into Google and learn about Gemini AI technologies and how they can use AI to improve their financial practice as well as partner with their marketing stakeholders to actually get to that better working relationship.

[Ben Smith]

I mean, the tradition is that the CMO asks for money and the CFO says no. How do you anticipate them working together better?

[Josh Spanier]

Well, the two things that I saw at this event that we hosted by our CFO was that great CMOs are transitioning from marketing speak into money speak. They're actually talking about gross profit margin, they're talking about reducing churn, they're talking about pricing power, the things that CFOs really, really care about. And when you get that alignment, that leads to much better outcomes for both sides. The second thing that I really saw and heard is that the CMO and the CFO need to come together to work out the data pipes, not just the metrics, but how the data flows around the company so that marketers can optimize to the right signal to deliver for the CFO and for the growth of the business overall.

[Ben Smith]

Where can people read more about this?

[Josh Spanier]

You can head over to ThinkWithGoogle.com, we've just published Understanding the CMO CFO Relationship in 2025. Head on over to ThinkWithGoogle.com to read about it.

[Ben Smith]

Thanks, Josh.

[Josh Spanier]

Thanks, Ben.

[Ben Smith]

When we're talking about nostalgics, maybe the sort of last question I want to ask you is about politics.

[Max Tawny]

Sure.

[Ben Smith]

Because you talk in the doc, which I kind of love, about how the New Yorker embodies kind of humane liberalism.

[David Remnick]

Rough days for that.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah. And I wonder, particularly in the Biden era, if the New Yorker kind of missed something about the moment. Maybe in that kind of politics. Like those Evan Osnos pieces on Biden are very, very good, obviously, but also clearly really didn't capture how wrong that was going in some sense, I think.

[David Remnick]

What the capturing of the aging question, if that's what you're talking about, was it the aging?

[Ben Smith]

I don't even know what it was, but that something about the Biden presidency was falling off a cliff as you and many others were writing these kind of like, huh, this guy's really like a successful president pieces.

[David Remnick]

I would say that there was much about the Biden presidency or any presidency that was not successful. I would say that the Obama presidency did not successfully foresee or grapple with certain resentments in all the obvious communities the way it should have. Even if you listen to Pod Save America, those guys who are ardent, ardent, ardent Obama eastas.

Can see that to some degree. But some of it's masked over because of the revolutionary nature of the Obama presidency, namely on an identity basis. The most radical thing about the Obama presidency was he was the first black president. Other than that, he was a kind of centrist, center left navigating liberal of a certain kind. That now seems terribly old fashioned. And I think younger people, particularly on the left, are not inclined to cut the Obama presidency much of a break for all kinds of reasons. I understand that. And Biden in some ways, who was even more inclined to take bigger risks in an old fashioned Rooseveltian sense, was so hampered, so deeply hampered by his terrible communication skills and his aging that I think we look back on him with real resentment. And you're 100% right, Ben. I don't think we were.

Realistic enough. And part of the reason is because of the specter of Trump.

About how deeply he had aged. You know, you could say it, you could write it. We had a cover a full year before everything fell apart with do you remember this? There was a cover of Biden, Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and I forget who else running a race with Walkers.

[Max Tawny]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Remnick]

But you know, I think Biden more than anybody was responsible for his own Shakespearean undoing.

[Ben Smith]

But when you think about the future of the New Yorker, do you think that that kind of humane liberalism has a future? Because I think one of the other things about Jeff and about the Atlantic is that. But I do think there's a sense in which the New Yorker is sort of the orthodox church of liberalism.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, but I think it's possible also to be the orthodox church of centrism too. You know, we've had this conversation offline, too. Your politics are inclined toward that. I know you come by it honestly. Your parents, I think, were kind of in their politics. And you're right, I am inclined toward a humane liberalism, which is a very broad set of principles and arguments. I think liberalism also takes in huge disagreements on all kinds of issues. I think all of these things have their orthodoxies. I think Bari Weiss has her own orthodoxies. I think that people on the left have their own orthodoxies. The question is, are you being honest with yourself? Are you including enough argument, self doubt, revision and so on to keep yourself honest? Are we a liberal magazine? Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Smith]

And I guess in some ways the success of the New Yorker is really knowing what you are, too.

[David Remnick]

I recognize that the newspapers of the Wall Street Journal are now quite good, but I used to read it mainly for the op ed page because I wanted that kind of pressure on my own thinking so that it doesn't become too absurdly, you know, either self regarding or unchallenged or what have you. You know, I don't like saying this because it sounds like I'm blaming the reporters and the editors, but I worry about my alma mater mainly because of its ownership and management, not because of the people in the newsroom.

[Ben Smith]

Did Bezos ever try to hire you for that job?

[David Remnick]

No.

[Ben Smith]

Huh.

[David Remnick]

No.

[Ben Smith]

I feel like it would have been a kind of good idea. Maybe he's listening.

[David Remnick]

My wife's desire to move back to Washington.

Is zero. And I. I love the job I've got. I really. I've been preposterously lucky in my professional life. Somebody sent me to Moscow in the middle of a revolution. Somebody hired me willy nilly to be a writer at the New Yorker. And then that same person left and an odd, often brilliant and generous owner made me the editor of the New Yorker. That's more luck than you can ever account for.

[Ben Smith]

Something more than luck in 27 years, though, of doing it.

[David Remnick]

I think I have what we Yiddishists call Zitzfleisch. I keep my ass in the chair and I work fairly hard.

[Max Tawny]

This reminds me of where I think we wanted to end it, which is looking back at your tenure, looking back at the tenure of the New Yorker over the last hundred years, I'm curious what the high moment was for you in your career as editor of the New Yorker. And obviously on the flip side, what the low point was.

[David Remnick]

You know, the low point, I feel now it's not a low point for it, but it's an endangered point. I think even journalists don't always take seriously the depth of this challenge. I mean, here we are talking freely on a podcast. I'll publish an issue this week and today without relatively little mind to any impingement from Donald Trump or the federal government. But this is a low point in the sense of. I've never seen in my lifetime democratic institutions and the press and freedom of speech so endangered in a way that I know we go to these Committee to Protect Journalists dinners and we make speeches, and I still don't think that it's recognized how fragile these things are. And they could easily go belly up. I really do. As far as triumphs are concerned or high points, you know, there are lots of stories that We've published, I'm extremely proud of whether it's Investigative Things by Jane Mayer or Sy Hirsch, but there's also, like, odd moments of literary brilliance or even quirkiness that I absolutely love, too. You know, Sandy Frazier wrote a piece, I swear to God, about pigeons and pigeon feet in the New Yorker, New York issue earlier this year. I just remember taking it home with me. I had printed it out for some reason, because I wanted to read it on the subway. And it made me so happy. It was so funny. The writing sentence by sentence was so brilliant that it took me out of myself and out of my Trump era gloom. And that's something that art can do.

[Max Tawny]

Have you talked to Trump? Have you ever interviewed him or talked to him at all?

[David Remnick]

You know, back in the day? Once or twice, but only the last time because I'm not covering this stuff. Right. I'm not schlepping down in Washington. We have people to do that.

[Max Tawny]

Yeah. You do write about him, though, obviously quite a bit.

[David Remnick]

I do, I do. He's somewhat present in our lives, Max. He's inescapable.

[Max Tawny]

I've noticed that.

[David Remnick]

I was here for the off the record meeting of Conde Nast editors Graydon wrote about in his. Graydon Carter wrote about in his memoir.

[Max Tawny]

Right.

[David Remnick]

I will tell you one thing that happened. I hope I'm not breaking any terrible, terrible rules here. We were waiting for. It was the winner. It was during the transition, waiting for Trump to come in. We were all seated around this table, people looking a little anxious and dour, and I'm seated next to Kellyanne Conway.

And I said, I don't think Donald Trump is usually late. Where is he? He said, you'll figure it out later. And he comes in, he does his meeting, and you know him off the record and on the record, it's the same thing. It's the same. He doesn't care. He said all kinds of outrageous things, but nothing you now haven't heard. And I figured it out, because later I went on social media and figured out he was in the hallway tweeting about what a shitty host Arnold Schwarzenegger was, succeeding him on his television show, the Apprentice.

[Max Tawny]

That's right.

[David Remnick]

So here's the about to be President of the United States going without any irony whatsoever, trashing Arnold Schwarzenegger's lack of skill, alleged lack of skill as a TV game show host.

[Ben Smith]

Someone else with a lot of clarity about his own brand in a certain way.

[David Remnick]

Exactly, exactly.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

What's his high points and low points, I wonder?

[Max Tawny]

He has conceded several points recently that he doesn't think that he's going to heaven, which is very interesting, obviously, David. So the other question that we wanted to ask is you're an editor. I'm curious, watching the documentary of which you're kind of the protagonist, but you didn't edit it. What would you have edited out of the documentary? And was there anything that, you know, that they got that they left on the cutting room floor?

[David Remnick]

Less Remnick, more cowbell, Definitely. I want the light on these unbelievable writers and editors and artists as much as humanly possible. So to the degree to which the light was on John Lee Anderson or Roz Chast or Kelefasani, et cetera, that's great. Had the film been as long as, you know, I don't know, Gone with the Wind even more. But it's not. That's the reality. Editing is something I do understand, and choosing writing is choosing.

[Max Tawny]

Well, that feels like a good place to leave it. David, congratulations on.

You're making me look bad with each passing day that you stay on the job after we wrote our article.

[David Remnick]

But that's my singular goal.

[Max Tawny]

Yes, exactly. Well, maybe we'll have to have you on when they do the 150 year.

[David Remnick]

You're damn right I'll be here.

[Max Tawny]

Yeah. All right, David, thank you so much.

[Ben Smith]

Thank you so much, David. This is fun.

[David Remnick]

Be well Foreign.

[Ben Smith]

I want to tell you about Think with Google. It's marketers go to spot for insights from top CMOs, practical guides on emerging tech and strategies that drive real growth. You can learn how AI can help level up your marketing and address your biggest challenges across creative media and measurement. Whether you're a marketer looking for new ways to reach your audience or a curious leader wanting to get inspired, think with Google is the place to be. Learn more by heading to thinkwithgoogle.com.

So, Max, you wrote this great story about succession at the New Yorker that David clearly read very closely. You proposed Barack Obama as his successor. What did you learn about who's going to succeed him, when he's gonna be succeeded, what the future of the New Yorker looks like from this conversation.

[Max Tawny]

The Obama thing, to be clear to everyone, it was a joke, you know, it was explaining the fact that this is a prestigious job, that very few people in the world could match David's qualifications at this point. And whoever succeeds him is inevitably going to be less qualified in some ways than. Than David. So I just want to kind of clear that part up. You know, I thought that David had a lot of really interesting things to say. But I also think that he didn't want to answer a lot of our questions. Obviously, on the top level, he didn't share the size of the New Yorker's audience, how much money it makes. Though he said that it's been profitable for almost 25 years now. It's been in the black for 25 years, which is quite impressive. And he didn't want to talk about low moments either. When we asked him about it, he talked more about threats to press freedom, which is definitely something that many people in the media are concerned about. But it doesn't really have anything to do with his tenure at the New Yorker. But I was struck, as I have been in previous instances when I've talked to David about. I think understanding is about where the New Yorker is positioned in the news media universe and the challenges that it faces in a contemporary media landscape. And I do think he understands clearly that nostalgia and tradition can be great for building subscriber businesses and keeping subscribers interested in the product that you put out every week and keeping them loyal and getting them to show up to your events. But, you know, tradition also, as something doesn't evolve and stays the same, there's a natural aging process that happens.

[Ben Smith]

I'm not sure I agree with that. If you think about the sort of great magazines of 1998, like the New Yorker's almost the sole survivor, really. I mean, the Atlantic at that point was kind of irrelevant and had fallen behind. It has caught up since. But there's been a huge cull of titles that we've forgotten about and have fallen out of print. You know, Red Herring and the industry standard were 400 pages that year. And there was something about being a very, very slow follower and holding very tight to their identity that I think has wound up serving them pretty well. I don't know. He did really dodge your questions about succession. Although I did think that one thing he said, that it's gotta be somebody who's their own person, which is, you know, obviously kind of a truism. But I think the degree to which a really good magazine like that really is reflect one person's taste and point of view is pretty real. And that it's gonna be a different person and a different taste and a different point of view. And I don't know who. You had a kind of league table of who the contenders were. And I would put M. Gessen pretty high on it, actually. They ran a magazine in Moscow that was a little bit like the New Yorker and have kind of become the voice of the New Yorker on politics. They'd be pretty good at it. You can speculate a little for me, Max, who do you think?

[Max Tawny]

Oh, you know, I put a few other names out there, people who I thought were interesting. But, I mean, the update from my reporting that David talked about was the fact that he loves his job and he's not going anywhere and that we were maybe premature to write that story, Though I actually don't necessarily think so, because it is something that he's talked about publicly and privately. And as we reported at the time, he had together a list, as Conde has its editors do, of who could possibly succeed him if he gets hit by a bus. The other thing, though, that I thought was interesting and I thought reflected how he's grappling with some major challenges that I think are facing a lot of media organizations is he asked what the value is of a magazine cover in 2025. New Yorker covers are famous, especially during the first Trump term. Even if they weren't selling more print copies, they were creating these viral covers that everybody was seeing. Most of them kind of based around and current events. It was a good marketing tactic. But I think clearly he's grappling with the fact that the COVID is maybe less important, maybe a lot less important than it was when he started.

[Ben Smith]

Yeah, I was surprised by that a little bit, because I think that for a lot of magazines, all they are is covers. Like, does Time publish a lot of articles these days? I don't know. I mean, I don't know, but they certainly. Those covers pop and people discuss them. And I've noticed that. I think we were looking at another interview David did on another podcast where they produced something that looked like a magazine cover for the podcast. So I sometimes think that covers are gonna be the only thing left.

[Max Tawny]

I guess the other thing that I'm curious about is he invoked you a lot personally. I mean, you know David. But did you expect that he was gonna bring up your parents? And what did you make of that? Is that your first mention of your parents on the show by a guest?

[Ben Smith]

Oh, my gosh. I don't know. But I hope they're pleased. Hello, mom and dad. Yeah, but I think it's actually something about being a really good editor of a magazine that lives very much in the moment that you pay a lot of attention. You know, he's. These are not kind of glass ivory tower jobs. I mean, David is somebody I've, you know, admired and known for a long time, but not intimately. And I actually learned quite a bit about his family, like his parents died really young, things like that. From the doc, it just reminded me like he pays a lot of attention. He knew that one of my parents, a Republican, one's a Democrat, and that sort of shapes my politics. Like, I must have told him that or written that at some point. But that's not like the most public fact about me. It's not on my Wikipedia page. Or maybe it is. I don't know.

[Max Tawny]

Well, that is it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to yet another episode of Mixed Signals from us here at Semaphore. Our show is produced by Manny Fadal, with special thanks to Josh Billenson, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, Jules Zern, Tori Kaur, and Daniel Haft. Our engineer is Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Billy Libby. Our public editor this week is Eric Schultz, Schultz, Obama's guy who gave us just a little bit of flack over suggesting that his old boss take over for Remnick when he retires.

[Ben Smith]

And special thanks this week to our friend Dan Colorusso, who gave us some excellent notes, which we hope you're hearing in the quality of the show. Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe on YouTube.

[Max Tawny]

And if you want more, you can always sign up to Semaphore's media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night.