The Prof G Pod · Vox Media Podcast Network

Can Journalism Survive AI? — with NYT CEO Meredith Kopit Levien

March 19, 2026·45 min·3 clips

Meredith Kopit Levien runs the New York Times — but says nothing makes her feel more insecure than parenting her 15-year-old son.

Scott Galloway opens with his own history on the New York Times board and praises Meredith Kopit Levien for navigating a brutal business. He frames the conversation around the divergence between the Times and the Washington Post. Meredith credits sustained, deliberate investment in original independent journalism, the largest newsroom in NYT history at 2,300 people, and 3,000 total content makers across the portfolio. She lays out the decade-long strategy of being the essential subscription for curious people. On AI, she explains the lawsuits and the Amazon deal as a single coherent stance: enforce IP rights and license on terms that comport with strategy. Galloway pushes her on whether media companies should form a music-industry-style coalition; she pushes back, citing existing cooperation on journalist safety and the Afghanistan evacuation, but says individual control of IP still matters most. Galloway pivots to the Ellison family acquiring a sprawling list of cable, streaming, and studio brands. Meredith declines to weigh in on the consolidation, saying it's not her work to think about. She talks about news, sports through The Athletic with 500-plus journalists, Wirecutter, NYT Cooking, and the games portfolio with Wordle, Connections, Strands, Pips, and a new multiplayer cross-play game as growth engines. On AI in the newsroom, she insists journalism is a human endeavor — reporters bearing witness and translating events — and uses examples like sending a bot into a losing locker room or untested AI recipes to argue against wholesale replacement. Galloway raises the political chill on media companies under FTC pressure and Trump-administration interference. Meredith says the Times is not being chilled, but acknowledges press-freedom encroachments are awful and confirms the Times has more lawyers today than at any point in its history. The interview closes with parenting. Meredith describes her 15-year-old son JJ, her screen-time concerns, and her worries about algorithmic feeds. She tells a story about calling her mother on a Saturday night to sit at a bar and ask whether she is thinking about high school the right way. Scott agrees parenting is where he feels least confident. The episode is sponsored by VCX, Odoo, SoFi, Pipedrive, and LinkedIn ads.

As heard by us

A useful media-business conversation on where AI helps newsroom productivity, and where the New York Times still sees human work as the product.

The Prof G Pod treats AI in journalism as an operating question, not a panic headline. Scott Galloway starts from his own use case: AI has not replaced writing for him, but it does help with editing, fact-checking, and efficiency.

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Why you'd press play

You get a 3,000-person news operation, a CEO who is not hedging, and a host who tried AI-writing and failed.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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