The New York Times' Andrew Rosenthal on Iraq, Times Select, and his father's secret past

GENERATION GAP Andrew Rosenthal (left) and his father, Abe

Read Charles Kaiser's new media column, Full Court Press

Andy Rosenthal was named editor of the editorial page of the New York Times last January. He is the youngest of three boys. He was the only son whom his father, Abe Rosenthal, was determined to turn into a journalist, a process that began when they started going on reporting trips together when Andy was six. In 1964, he won the third-grade spelling bee at Public School 183 in Manhattan, on the word "necessary." He was the Moscow bureau chief for the Associated Press before joining the Times in 1987, immediately after his father retired as executive editor. I met him in his office in the Times's new Renzo Piano–designed headquarters on Eighth Avenue. His office is decorated with a series of striking color photos that Andy shot and printed himself. Then we decamped to the cafeteria to discuss Iraq, famous fathers, and the craziness that afflicts everyone who becomes executive editor—a job he insists (implausibly) that he does not aspire to.

ANDY ROSENTHAL: The Administration has managed to keep this war almost entirely invisible. I went to this thing last week, the International Women's Media Foundation, where they give the Courage in Journalism award. These are people who get up every day and risk their lives to do what we do here in the cafeteria, and in this case they gave it to six Iraqi women who were the backbone of the McClatchy bureau in Baghdad. You know, they couldn't be photographed in the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom because their lives are at such risk, and this woman gave this wonderful speech and we ran it almost in full. The point there was, these people live with this war every single day of their lives and we don't live with it a single day of our lives.

CHARLES KAISER: Did you see [Col. Lawrence] Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, on the Daily Show? He said we'll have to go out in a year, because there won't be enough captains—it will be impossible to maintain this force.
They're offering $35,000 [to reenlist] if you're a major or something. And among the specialties they said they were short of is infantry. I'm sorry, I'm not a military man, but I think infantry is pretty basic to the army. You know what would be an interesting inquiry? Take the class of 2002 at West Point, which was the first class in generations that knew they were going to war. I went up there in November of 2001, after 9/11. I was shown around campus by the two top graduating cadets, a man and a woman, and they talked about that [knowing that they were going to war]. They said it really changed things for their graduating class. And then I ran into a guy who was a flak—this is about a year or so ago—a big shot in the military, like the head of a subdivision of the army. He was a colonel. And he said that particular class was washing out in droves. They got to the end of their mandated service and they were just leaving. It wasn't that they were afraid of dying—but that this war is insane; it's being run by people who have no idea what they're doing, at the expense of the soldiers. ... You never want to have troops in the field when the political mandate runs out in Washington. And that's exactly where they are. And it's the worst possible situation.
Being executive editor ruined him. It turned [my father] into a crazy person. They all—I don't know if they go in crazy, but they come out crazy. All of them
Let's talk a little bit about the Web, since the editorial page seems to be one of the most Web-hip spaces in the building. How many people do you have working exclusively on the Web besides Naka?
Three editors and a clerk. Plus, we have a whole list of people who only write for us online. We have lots. By January, when you come to our website, every day except Saturday you'll have something brand new and fresh for the Web. We have Stanley Fish, who is our curmudgeonly semiconservative guy. We have Tim Egan, who's a former New York Times correspondent who did a stint for us on the Op-Ed and will be a permanent online columnist for us starting in January. We will have Olivia Judson, who writes about science. We have Allison Arieff, who writes about design. We have Judith Warner, who writes about almost anything she wants to write about. And we have a little stable of visual artists, including Maira Kalman, Jeff Scher, and Rutu Modan.

Do you pay these people? Or do you use the Huffington Post model?
No, no, we pay them. Because we have this crazy view that people need to pay the rent. When I became executive editor ... not executive editor. Ahhh! [We both laugh.]

That's the Freudian slip we were waiting for!
A job I never want.

Oh, sure.
I don't. I have a family.

Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't be vice president, either. If it were offered.
Of the United States? Oh, hell yes. It's a four-year vacation with a guaranteed paycheck.

And a very good airplane.
An airplane and a nice house in Washington. I get to go to Bethesda for my medical treatment—I hear they do a great colonoscopy there.

Nobody's going to believe you don't want to be executive editor. Including me.
I don't want to talk about that. I watched that job kill my father. I'm not really interested in it.

It hardly killed him. He went on for quite a while afterward.
It ruined him. It turned him into a crazy person. They all—I don't know if they go in crazy, but they all come out crazy. All of them.

Did he seem crazier to you at the end than he was at the beginning?
Vastly.

CRAZY/DUTIFUL Bill Keller

Really?
Yes. They all were. Joe Lelyveld. Bill Keller.

What was your position on Times Select [which put Times columnists behind a wall that was only accessible to subscribers to the paper, or to those who paid for Times Select; the Times gave up on charging earlier this fall]?
I wasn't consulted. I wasn't part of the discussion. The discussion predated my becoming deputy editorial page editor. When they went behind the wall, I was deputy editor. My position at that point was, I think that the newspaper industry joined hands and took a collective leap off a cliff for no discernible reason—when we decided to announce to the world that what we do has no value at all. And we should have been charging for our websites from day one. Subscriptions have been part of this forever. You have to pay for paper. You have to pay for pixels. It costs money. And I think it was a huge mistake. I can't put that back in the tube now. But if you look at the Internet, the only thing that's free is what we do: information. Everything else costs money. Ring tones cost a dollar. You pay for your access to the Internet. You pay for your e-mail. Everybody says e-mail is free. It's not free. First of all, you're paying your ISP for it. And if you're using something like Google mail, you're turning yourself into an advertising conduit for a giant corporation. There's nothing free about the Internet. It's just baloney.