NY Times Publisher Outlines Possible Threats to Press Freedom Under Trump

By Mel Laytner


AG Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, issued a stark warning about the dangers that the incoming Trump administration could pose to press independence, describing methods used by authoritarian leaders worldwide to illustrate the risks.

Speaking to packed audience at the Silurians Press Club on Jan. 15, Sulzberger didn’t mince words.


“We’re in a period of prolonged and fairly intense democratic erosion,” he began, setting the stage for a critical conversation about the fragile state of press freedom.


Sulzberger outlined a troubling pattern in a wide-ranging conversation with Silurians past president Joe Berger, himself a former Times reporter and editor for 30 years.


Authoritarian leaders in democratic countries, Sulzberger said, cannot engage in overt censorship. Instead, they have adopted more subtle methods of controlling the press.

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NY Times Publisher AG Sulzberger with Silurians Joe Berger Jan 15, 2025

HOLD THE DATE—Feb. 19

A Journalist's Hilarious Deep Dive Into the Absurdities of New York City's Contemporary Art Scene

Join us for an afternoon of irreverent humor and sharp insights with Bianca Bosker, best-selling author of Get the Picture, at our Feb. 19, Silurians Press Club luncheon.


Bosker’s book – the full title is "Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See" – is a rollicking exposé of New York City's contemporary art scene.


It's an alternate universe, she writes, where people talk "like they were trapped in dictionaries and being forced to chew their way out."

An instant New York Times Bestseller and named one of the Best Books of 2024 by NPR, Time, and The Economist, this book is a hilariously self-conscious dive into the glittery chaos of the art world.


She will dissect the art canonization machine in conversation with Silurians’ own Betsy Ashton, herself a successful fine artist. They will examine this surreal habitat of gallersits, artists, collectors, and curators to uncover why art matters and how it shapes our lives.


Bosker immerses herself in its peculiar rituals: stretching canvases until her hands bleed, infiltrating billionaire collector soirées, and even letting a nearly-naked performance artist sit on her face—all in the name of art.


Bosker brings the same unflinching curiosity and humor that made her previous book, Cork Dork, a New York Times Bestseller. In that book, she infiltrated the obsessive world of sommeliers, sniffing corks and chasing vintages to uncover the mysteries of taste. Now, she turns her lens on the art world as she probes everything from billion-dollar auctions to the science of sight.

from the January 2025 Silurian News

A Silurian at the Met Museum of Art: Chester Higgins, Jr.

Award winning photographer's fascination with Egypt


By Roberta Hershenson

One of the hottest art shows in town is “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876—Now,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Critic Jason Farago, writing in the New York Times, called the show “winningly eclectic” and “beautifully designed,” while referring to Ancient Egypt as “an inspiration but also a lost dream” for the Black diaspora.


A man is standing in front of two framed pictures on a wall.

Photo by Betsy Kissam

Chester Higgins, Jr., flanked by his two pieces in the Met’s “Flight Into Egypt” exhibit: “My two images help celebrate the African presence in the ancient Egyptian civilization.”

   That “lost dream” idea is reflected in the works of imagination by many of the contributing artists. But for the Silurians’ own  Chester Higgins, Jr., who has two photographs in the show, Ancient Egypt is intensely real.


    Retired from his four-decades as a New York Times staff photographer, Chester, a Silurians Board member, has visited Egypt 22 times and is planning more trips. He believes, he said, in a “parallel reality” that he calls “the spirit world,” and where better to find it than in Egypt, with its monuments to the afterlife?


   Chester’s goal is to attain an even deeper insight into the beliefs that animated the ancients, though his knowledge is already impressive. “I am obsessed,” he said in a recent interview for Silurian News.

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Selwyn Raab, The Don of Mafia Reporters 

By Joseph Berger

  When Selwyn Raab  was growing up on the clamorous streets of the Lower East Side in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he learned that in the nearby neighborhood of Little Italy there was a group of men called “the Mafia,” whose scary members would sell you fun stuff like fireworks and pot.

Later in the 1960s as an education reporter writing about corrupt school-construction contracts, he was told by school officials that, if the city cracked down on the Mafia gangsters who were behind the corruption, the city would never get the fish it needed for student cafeterias. Nor would the schools’ garbage get picked up. 

 “Everywhere you looked, there was Mob involvement, and nobody was doing anything about it,” Raab said during a phone interview in September.

Selwyn Raab and actor Michael Imperioli serve as consulting producer and executive producer, respectively, for American Godfathers.

Those early experiences launched Raab on a legendary journalism track in which he scrutinized the Mafia, its clannish structure, rituals and roguish personalities as a reporter and editor at the World Telegram & Sun, NBC News, WNET and the New York Times. He became—like Jerry Capeci at the New York Post and Anthony M. DeStefano at Newsday—one of the Mob’s chief chroniclers.


In 2005, Raab turned the wisdom he’d accumulated over 40 years of writing about the Mafia into the New York Times bestseller Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires; reissued in paperback in 2016, Five Families once again hit the bestseller list.
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from the January 2025 Silurian News

A Silurian at the Met Museum of Art: Chester Higgins, Jr.

Award winning photographer's fascination with Egypt

from the January 2025 Silurian News

Selwyn Raab, The Don of Mafia Reporters 

Mafia chronicler to Best Selling author to Consulting Producer

By Roberta Hershenson

One of the hottest art shows in town is “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876—Now,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Critic Jason Farago, writing in the New York Times, called the show “winningly eclectic” and “beautifully designed,” while referring to Ancient Egypt as “an inspiration but also a lost dream” for the Black diaspora.

By Joseph Berger

  When Selwyn Raab  was growing up on the clamorous streets of the Lower East Side in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he learned that in the nearby neighborhood of Little Italy there was a group of men called “the Mafia,” whose scary members would sell you fun stuff like fireworks and pot.

A man is standing in front of two framed pictures on a wall.

Photo by Betsy Kissam

Chester Higgins, Jr., flanked by his two pieces in the Met’s “Flight Into Egypt” exhibit: “My two images help celebrate the African presence in the ancient Egyptian civilization.”

  That “lost dream” idea is reflected in the works of imagination by many of the contributing artists. But for the Silurians’ own  Chester Higgins, Jr., who has two photographs in the show, Ancient Egypt is intensely real.


  Retired from his four-decades as a New York Times staff photographer, Chester, a Silurians Board member, has visited Egypt 22 times and is planning more trips. He believes, he said, in a “parallel reality” that he calls “the spirit world,” and where better to find it than in Egypt, with its monuments to the afterlife?


  Chester’s goal is to attain an even deeper insight into the beliefs that animated the ancients, though his knowledge is already impressive. “I am obsessed,” he said in a recent interview for Silurian News.

Continue Reading
Two men are sitting in chairs in a living room.

Later in the 1960s as an education reporter writing about corrupt school-construction contracts, he was told by school officials that, if the city cracked down on the Mafia gangsters who were behind the corruption, the city would never get the fish it needed for student cafeterias. Nor would the schools’ garbage get picked up. 


 “Everywhere you looked, there was Mob involvement, and nobody was doing anything about it,” Raab said during a phone interview in September.

Selwyn Raab and actor Michael Imperioli consulting producer and exec. producer, respectively, for American Godfathers.

A book titled five families by selwyn raab

Those early experiences launched Raab on a legendary journalism track in which he scrutinized the Mafia, its clannish structure, rituals and roguish personalities as a reporter and editor at the World-Telegram & Sun, NBC News, WNET and the New York Times. He became—like Jerry Capeci at the New York Post and Anthony M. DeStefano at Newsday—one of the Mob’s chief chroniclers. 


In 2005, Raab turned the wisdom he’d accumulated over 40 years of writing about the Mafia into the New York Times bestseller Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires; reissued in paperback in 2016, Five Families once again hit the bestseller list.
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Recent Guests/Speakers

Delicious Deep Dive into "The Paper of Wreckage"

By David A. Andelman


Two of the great names of the NY Post’s Page Six,  Susan Mulcahy and Frank DiGiacomo, reminisced about the paper’s heyday and their book, "Paper of Wreckage." But it’s the subtitle—“The Rogues, Renegades, Wiseguys, Wankers, and Relentless Reporters Who Redefined American Media”—that says it all.

Maggie Haberman on the Challenges of Calling the 2024 Election

By David A. Andelman

On October 16, Maggie Haberman  really didn’t know who was going to win the election on November 5. That’s just a bit frightening, and at the same time a bit energizing. Because if she doesn’t know, who would?

Barry on Breslin!

By Mel Laytner


Dan Barry remembers his father tossing the newspaper at him every morning with the same command: “Read Breslin.”
VIEW MORE SILURIAN SPEAKER VIDEOS

Items About Our Business

News Outlets Batten Down the Hatches for Trump’s Return

Media organizations are preparing for what they fear will be a legal and political onslaught from the new administration

By David Enrich and Katie Robertson


(Jan. 13) Reporters and editors at national newspapers are increasing their reliance on encrypted communications to help shield themselves and their sources from potential federal leak investigations and subpoenas.


Multiple media organizations are evaluating whether they have enough insurance coverage to absorb a potential wave of libel and other litigation from officials who have already shown an inclination to file such suits.


And a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet is preparing for the possibility that the government will investigate issues like whether its use of freelancers complies with labor regulations.
New Button

The New Yorker

What’s a Fact, Anyway?

"Journalists put more stress on accuracy than ever before. The problem is, accuracy is a slippery idea."

by Fergus McIntosh (Jan. 11 issue)

 

“…Trust in many institutions has fallen over the years, but in journalism it has plummeted.


"In 1972, Gallup began asking people in the United States, 'How much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media?'


 "The numbers used to be highly favorable—in 1976, more than seventy per cent said they had a lot, and very few reported having none—but in 2024 a plurality of respondents (thirty-six per cent) said that they had ‘none at all.’


“What passes for truth often depends on where one falls on the political spectrum: it’s no coincidence that Donald Trump’s venture into social media has “truth” in its name.”
Full Article in New Yorker (payall)
The northwestern local news initiative logo is purple and white.

Donald Trump won the 2024 election with one of the smallest popular-vote margins in U.S. history, but in news deserts – counties lacking a professional source of local news – it was an avalanche. Trump won 91% percent of these counties.


While Trump’s national popular-vote margin was just under 1.5%, his margin in news deserts was massive. He won these counties by an average of 54 percentage points. In the few won by Harris, her margin was a comparatively slim 18 points.


The findings are based on an analysis of voting data by Medill Journalism School’s State of Local News project.
Click for 'Local News Initiative'

News Outlets Batten Down the Hatches for Trump’s Return

Media organizations are preparing for what they fear will be a legal and political onslaught from the new administration

By David Enrich and Katie Robertson


(Jan. 13) Reporters and editors at national newspapers are increasing their reliance on encrypted communications to help shield themselves and their sources from potential federal leak investigations and subpoenas.


Multiple media organizations are evaluating whether they have enough insurance coverage to absorb a potential wave of libel and other litigation from officials who have already shown an inclination to file such suits.


And a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet is preparing for the possibility that the government will investigate issues like whether its use of freelancers complies with labor regulations.
New Button

The New Yorker

What’s a Fact, Anyway?

"Journalists put more stress on accuracy than ever before. The problem is, accuracy is a slippery idea."

by Fergus McIntosh (Jan. 11 issue)

 

“…Trust in many institutions has fallen over the years, but in journalism it has plummeted.


"In 1972, Gallup began asking people in the United States, 'How much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media?'


 "The numbers used to be highly favorable—in 1976, more than seventy per cent said they had a lot, and very few reported having none—but in 2024 a plurality of respondents (thirty-six per cent) said that they had ‘none at all.’


“What passes for truth often depends on where one falls on the political spectrum: it’s no coincidence that Donald Trump’s venture into social media has “truth” in its name.”
Full Article in New Yorker (payall)
The northwestern local news initiative logo is purple and white.

Donald Trump won the 2024 election with one of the smallest popular-vote margins in U.S. history, but in news deserts – counties lacking a professional source of local news – it was an avalanche. Trump won 91% percent of these counties.


While Trump’s national popular-vote margin was just under 1.5%, his margin in news deserts was massive. He won these counties by an average of 54 percentage points. In the few won by Harris, her margin was a comparatively slim 18 points.


The findings are based on an analysis of voting data by Medill Journalism School’s State of Local News project.
Click for 'Local News Initiative'
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