“Will the New York Occasions make it?” That was the matter of the city-hall conference that the newspaper’s then-government editor, Bill Keller, held for his nervous employees in the late 2000s. He walked onstage to the tune “Not Dead Yet” from the musical “Spamalot.”
Nowadays, when the New York Occasions has nearly 10 million having to pay subscribers and posts yearly profits in the hundreds of millions of pounds, it is uncomplicated to ignore how bleak its long term appeared 15 several years in the past. But as Adam Nagourney recounts in his masterful new background, “The Occasions: How the Newspaper of Document Survived Scandal, Scorn, and the Transformation of Journalism,” its yo-yoing economic fortunes are usual of the turbulence that has dogged the paper for the previous 4 a long time as it has struggled to protect its place as the country’s — arguably the world’s — preeminent information outlet.
