Jodi Kantor

It needs to be enthralling.

And even when the news is bad,

I believe it can be enthralling.

Journalism is the art of drawing somebody into a story and holding their attention.

You were then recruited by Frank Rich to join the New York Times as the editor of the Arts and Leisure section, which was a significant leap at the stage of your career.

How did you first meet Frank, and what do you think he saw in your work that led to that invitation?

Well,

Debbie, I want to be blunt.

This was a crazy thing to happen.

I knew it was crazy at the time, but all these years later, now that I am a 50-year-old grown-up investigative journalist who does complex work, I can see even more fully how nuts it really was.

They handed the arts and leisure section to someone who was 28 years old and had very little journalistic experience.

Frank just really wanted to shake things up.

The reason I was hired is because at that point I was the culture editor of Slate and I was doing things that were new and different.

And I can say one more thing, which is I did have a vision for the coverage.

I felt and probably still feel that too much arts and culture coverage is...

is dictated by the PR calendar.

Like it's dictated by like, this thing is coming out and this thing is coming out.

Obviously, there is a lot of service in that.

But what I really want from arts journalism is more of a sense of independent inquiry and asking questions.

the big questions.