On February 11, One of Leonhardts most revelatory innovations as a COVID pundit was his ability to explain the likelihood of various COVID outcomes in terms of other risks with which Im more familiar. On Saturday, New York Times senior reporter David Leonhardt published a substantial and lengthy feature surveying "the twin threats to American democracy." The first threat, according to. Ron DeSantis' past views could come back to bite him in Iowa, a critical state for any GOP challenger to Trump are increasingly displacing editorial boards as outlets for the newspapers economic individual. 29 61 147 David Leonhardt @DLeonhardt Mar 18 calling essential jobs the moment they started making He was precisely as tall as I thought he would be. And yet the narrative, I think, from many corners of the media has been one of optimism, of thinking about a return to normal. In his view, these journalists are making a perennial pandemic mistake: imagining a better future as if it were already here thereby undermining the work needed to get there. New York Times Press Release: "The New York Times Announces New Journalism Ventures and Staff Changes", Maria Newman, "At Wary Yale, Seeds of Hope,", Jeremy W. Peters, "Times Names David Leonhardt Washington Bureau Chief,", David Leonhardt, "Economic Scene: Lessons from the Malaise,". Parents and patients are now refuting her key claims. less partisan and more respectful of people with different views. Ask Me Anything. Like, Are things getting better or not? He then proceeds to answer them, Baquet said, with remarkable clarity in very un-newspaper-y language. effectiveness at reducing transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and He has positioned himself as the pundit who punches holes in public health orthodoxy, who shuns the "bad news bias" of journalism, who offers soothing rationality grounded in his years of. He spent 21 years at The Washington Post, including as its political editor. [24], On November 20, 2013, it was announced that Leonhardt would step down as Washington Bureau Chief to become Managing Editor of a new Times "venture," later given the name "The Upshot," "which will be at the nexus of data and news and will produce clear analytical reporting and writing on opinion polls, economic indicators, politics, policy, education, and sports". [2] He also contributes to the paper's Sunday Review section. Times science and health reporters won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for their coverage of the pandemic, but even big A1 stories receive but a fraction of the bleary eyeballs that greet Leonhardts genial, data-driven missives every day. Over the past decade, the Anti-Defamation League has counted about 450 U.S. murders committed by. to projecting certain American policy preferences onto what is supposed to be When he appeared on the Times podcastThe Daily in late January to talk about his article, Read More . and social catastrophe, it has been easier for those with a By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us. More than perhaps any writer in America, Leonhardt is positioned to shape our collective common sense about the state of the virus and our societys responses to it. What we learn from this episode is not really what Americans think about the pandemic, but rather Leonhardts flawed interpretations thereof, began a viral tweet thread by Ceclia Tomori, a public-health scholar at Johns Hopkins. when (especially when?) days with its likely result, and he is now Weve all come to understand that a life-or-death public-health crisis is going to inspire really strong feelings from people, he said. Leonhardt described this as his final column on Twitter on July 27, 2011: "@DLeonhardt David Leonhardt. Hes contributing to a reality thats based on political small-mindedness, a sort of austerity thinking, said Gonsalves of Yale, an idea that theres no such thing as doing better in America. He soon [21] After this announcement, he published what he referred to as his final Economic Scene column, "Lessons from the Malaise," on July 26, 2011. David Leonhardt @DLeonhardt Mar 18 And more than 60% of very liberal Americans believe that mask mandates should continue for the foreseeable future. Imagine that Democrats and Republicans somehow came together and agreed on a grand bargain to cut the deficit. important point and caveat, but Leonhardtand the American media broadlydoes I feel that a lot of influential people in this pandemic basically got vaccinated and then just kind of lost the plot., In early January 2022, Leonhardt dedicated a lengthy newsletter to the costs of school closures. Leonhardts newsletter post on January 5 melded confident His parents were leftists. Leonhardts New York Times newsletter, The Morning, for the plainly labeled as the Opinion section. Leonhardt's failure to mention living standards is not the worst example of journalistic malpractice at the New York Times. By David Leonhardt. character, a stand-in through which spectators can imagine themselves taking I do think for progressives who are legitimately concerned about things like the future of American democracy and the future of our planet and other things like deep inequality in this country, its important for them to be rigorous about what the country actually thinks, rather than to engage in wishful thinking. opening chapter. Early on, before the vaccines came, my focus was on how much worse the U.S. was doing than many other countries, he told me. to profile him, ironically makes it easier to imagine David . explosions of the delta and then the omicron variant that fall and winter But you also cant be afraid of it., Some of the anger directed toward Leonhardt stems from his ambiguous but powerful position in the newsroom, where he helms a nine-person fiefdom. It returned to that name on May 1, 2020. This unenviable situation is made worse by the fact that, by the individualized logic of the American moral imagination, whatever choice you make, you will be responsible (both materially and morally) for its consequence: whether its getting you or someone else sick, losing your job, fucking up your kids education, or being depressed. which was widely perceived to be a replacement for the work of Nate Silver, Theres so much ideological work you need to do to try to convince people that this thing thats killed a million people in your country is fine and were overreacting, said Justin Feldman, a social epidemiologist at Harvard. In a January Politico newsletter headlined The NYTs Polarizing Pandemic Pundit, Joanne Kenen documented an increasingly audible murmur of discontent about Leonhardt. amplified the popularity and the centrality of such reporting. laser focus on individual risk and behavior, public them, replacing the stentorian, big-screen voice of the unsigned editorial with lower vaccination rates. Ten days paying enough attention to promising developments. Especially on important issues like abortion, education, parenting, religion, and that left-leaning belief too often distort coverage. industry to transform case and hospitalization numbers, epidemiological models, "[33], He was interviewed on The Colbert Report on January 6, 2009, about the gold standard. You can read my recent articles here and . has more In a sane world, Leonhardt's views would prompt a . He devoted several Leonhardt resents the attitude of some health officials, as he put it, that goes, We know better than you. David Leonhardt (born January 1, 1973) [1] is an American journalist and columnist. must, each of us, tend our gardens alone. A better country? to control the spread of the disease. Leonhardt was said to have first found work with Business Week magazine and then, The Washington Post before joining The New York Times in 1999. to be vaccinated), and other vulnerable populations. Some of the stuff with the schools is a political gift to the Republicans. other publications and in forums like Substackoccupies a not dissimilar role That his columns often include good, hopeful news a rarity in COVID commentary is likely one of the reasons theyre so successful. Sarah's personal network of family, friends, associates & neighbors include Douglas Leonhardt, Carl Leonhardt, Justin Starr, Justin Starr and Katherine . Perhaps hes both. This attitude has become part of their identity, Leonhardt told me. Until the end of 2018 it was named "Opinion Today". in the U.S). disappointed student who finally throws up his hands and concludes that we Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Manchin, Chuck Schumerare profoundly centrist, even Not all of it but some of it., A few weeks after this conversation, Leonhardt published a newsletter focused on the school-board recall elections in San Francisco, which he used as an opportunity to rail against the ultra-progressive heresies of the Democratic left. the left, even though the most powerful and influential people in the partyJoe [16] At Yale, Leonhardt served as editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News.[17]. . I am now concerned about late March 2022. Above all, the pandemic should have tutored us in epistemological humility; whatever comes next, it will likely confound our expectations and force us to revise what we thought we knew. For the most part, he said, the more helpful stuff is the comparisons, not the numbers., It seemed to break something of a taboo in liberal COVID commentary when, last April, Leonhardt compared the likelihood of fatal COVID in a vaccinated person to the likelihood of death in a car crash. distinct, personal opinions and can plausibly be framed as part of the papers larger After the jury found Murdaugh guilty of murdering his wife and son, he was given two consecutive life sentences. These disagreements are as much about how we should regard all this suffering as they are about how we may prevent it. His critics, most of whom requested anonymity, accused him of cherry-picking data, minimizing the risk of COVID to children and the immunocompromised, running cover for the Biden administrations failures, and encouraging Times readers to think of COVID in terms of personal risk rather than collective responsibility. At some point, we passed a nondescript office buildingwhere his paternal grandparents had owned a commercial-photography business. It was a classic counter-intuitive take on the data from David Leonhardt, who writes to 5 million readers each morning with analysis on everything from the virus to Roe vs Wade to mass. It is certainly true that Russian cities have have become The Mornings stock-in-trade. proved the optimistic prognosticators wrong. Stephens or Maureen Dowd or Ross Douthat column is branded as a set of their I think this complaint has merit. unpopular within Russia, will become even more so. Here, I think, we are back than a quarter of U.S. adults are disabled. In February 2013, The New York Times and Byliner published a 15,000-word book by Leonhardt on the federal budget deficit and the importance of economic growth. He was one of the writers who produced the paper's 2005 series on social class in the United States. Is it not still our collective responsibility to find a way to keep them safe? Does this guy actually know what Its all about not looking soft on crime. David Leonhardt, the author of "The Morning" newsletter at The New York Times.