A New Role for Mike Abrams

When it comes to envisioning and evangelizing ways to improve New York Times journalism, there is no one better than Mike Abrams.

Across a nearly 22-year Times career in Sports, Culture, Culture and Careers, and Standards, where he became a deputy editor in 2023, Mike has demonstrated a gift for identifying holes, challenges and opportunities in stories and coming up with strategies and solutions. He sees both the forest and the trees, thinking broadly about coverage and refining our journalistic practices to make us better. Mike was the driving force behind Newsroom U, which has helped so many of us sharpen and deepen our skills, and has evaluated and steered many prospective Times editors through our editor vetting operation. He thinks a lot about the intersections of our journalism - how our reporting and editing dovetail with our standards, how our audience engages with all of our story forms and formats, and how our independence and accuracy strengthen the news report as well as The Times's credibility and reputation in the public eye.

Mike is now taking on a new role that draws on this deep well of expertise and experience, as the deputy editor for Trust.

Building on the inside-the-journalism work of Reporter Videos, The Daily, The Morning, Times Insider and more, Mike will work with me and the Trust team to lead new initiatives that show and explain how The Times works, what we do and why we're doing it. The goals: to help current and potential audiences better understand the value of reporting and the nature of independent journalism, and to buttress and elevate the reputation and credibility of The Times. These initiatives will include features and Q&As with reporters and editors on how we execute challenging or provocative stories; explainers that aim to build confidence and trust in journalism; new work with newsletters, video and audio; the development of playbooks and training to fortify trust work and independence in our journalistic practices; and efforts to reach new audiences and people off platform who do not read, watch or listen to The Times.

In his previous roles, as a Standards deputy and as director of the newsroom's journalism practices and principles, Mike helped many of us become better reporters, writers, editors and problem-solvers. In doing so he advanced one of the core parts of our shared Trust and Standards work: To promote fairness and accuracy and eliminate anything in our work that might come across as bias.

" Mike has been an incredible partner on Standards," said Susan Wessling, the Standards editor. "He has the respect of all his colleagues for his judgment, integrity and deep commitment to our work - all of which will serve The Times so well in this next role. (We don't need to dwell on the awful puns and dad jokes.)"

This is a crucial moment for trust in the news media. Many people are turning to A.I., content creators and partisan news sources to satisfy their interest. News organizations can no longer take for granted that people value reporting. Americans' confidence in the media generally is at a low - but we've found that large shares of people trust the accuracy and newsgathering of The Times, while wanting to understand our intent, our purpose and our journalism better. Mike is the perfect person to help lead this work across the newsroom.

- Patrick