NY Times Hires Media Columnist Who Once Predicted It ‘Could Plausibly Go Out of Business’
NY Times Hires Media Columnist Who Once Predicted It ‘Could Plausibly Go Out of Business’
Sarah RumpfTue, September 15, 2026 at 10:21 PM UTC
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(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
Michael Hirschorn was wrong, and he’s absolutely “thrilled” about it.
The New York Timesannounced Tuesday in a column from executive editor Joe Kahn and managing editor Carolyn Ryan that Hirschorn was The Gray Lady’s new media columnist — along with an intriguing reference to “revisiting his past reporting.”
The Times report on Hirschorn’s hiring includes a reference to an article he wrote for the January/February 2009 issue of The Atlantic headlined, “End Times.”
“Can America’s paper of record survive the death of newsprint? Can journalism?” the subheading asked.
In the article, Hirschorn looked at The New York Times Company’s earning reports at the time and commented that “drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default” on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. The Times was also facing dwindling cash reserves, debt in excess of $1 billion, and “no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status); “the paper’s future doesn’t look good,” he concluded.
Of course, Hirschorn could not predict the Wordle effect and other developments that have helped the Times grow digital subscriber numbers and increase revenues.
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“Back in 2008, I wrote that The New York Times could plausibly go out of business,” Hirschorn is quoted in Kahn and Ryan’s article. “I’m thrilled to have not only been proven wrong, but so wrong that you guys were able to turn around and hire me.”
Hirschorn is only the fourth person to hold the title of the Times’ media columnist, which “was pioneered and developed by DavidCarr two decades ago,” wrote Kahn and Ryan, and later held by Jim Rutenberg and then Ben Smith, who “only deepened the column’s impact with their investigative muscle and analysis.”
The Times editors lauded Hirschorn as “an insightful, mischievous, forward-looking writer and media executive” who “has been both a player in the ever-changing media ecosystem as well as a keen observer of it for the past 20 years.”
Hirschorn’s résumé includes serving as the features editor at Esquire, executive editor of New York magazine, editor in chief of the alternative music magazine Spin, co-founding Inside.com, head of programming at VH1 during the early 2000s “as the network pioneered the celebreality genre,” as well as helping A-list musicians including Jay-Z, Skrillex, and Diplo develop their YouTube channels.
His written work includes contributions for The Atlantic, The Times Book Review, T magazine, plus “a number of standout columns” for the Times.
Hirschorn’s column, “The Media Equation,” will kick off in November.
The post NY Times Hires Media Columnist Who Once Predicted It ‘Could Plausibly Go Out of Business’ first appeared on Mediaite.
Source: “AOL Money”
