•COOMI KAPOOR: What is the guiding philosophy of the New York Times which makes it such a standard of excellence in journalism?

Basically, the New York Times covered everything — the whole world, culture, business and finance, sports, everything. And did it in a responsible way with its own reporting and a high standard of journalist excellence. It was a general interest newspaper with a vengeance. Now the New York Times and all other papers are getting smaller because of the finances in the newspaper business and it can’t promise quite as much. It’s shaken in its conviction that people wanted it to weigh the news and say this is what we should be talking about in our country. For myself, it’s still what I want because I don’t have time to spend my whole day at a computer, I don’t want to spend my whole day looking at websites in order to figure out what really matters today. I welcome the gatekeeper who tells me what matters. Today, reporting staffs are getting smaller. Major news organisations that maintain large foreign staffs have gotten smaller. Television networks used to be all over the place — they are in only a few places now. The number of American news organisations that still cover the world the way they covered it in 50 years earlier is two or three. And in the US, it’s also about the number of reporters the national news organisations maintain around the country. It’s just down, down, down.

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