Starting today, Sam Sifton steps into the role of host for The Morning, The New York Times’s highly popular newsletter, reaching over five million readers daily. He’s committed to guiding us through global events, serving as a reliable companion for navigating complex stories, insightful critiques, touching profiles, captivating audio, and all the other remarkable content our news organization offers.
Having worked closely with Sam this past autumn, I’ve come to know him as a wonderfully unique individual. It’s time you did too! Since joining The Times in 2002, he has held seven incredibly diverse positions, including:
- He served as the esteemed restaurant critic from 2009-2011, a role that surely tested his legendary workout regimen to stay fit amidst countless meals.
- He led one of our largest news desks as National editor, overseeing major stories including the Boston Marathon bombing.
- He virtually pioneered NYT Cooking, a platform many of us now depend on. It’s my go-to when I’m stumped, like, What do I do with these parsnips I found at the market? (His seafood chowder is a fantastic answer!)
- For the past five years, he directed all our culture and lifestyle coverage, so expect some exceptional recommendations in those areas.
I recently sat down with Sam for a candid conversation about his life and new venture.
Adam: OK, you’re hosting a morning newsletter. Are you a morning person?
Sam: I am. The hours between 5 and 9 pulse with creativity. And I love to greet a dawn. But I also know there are going to be some late nights on this show. Late nights, early mornings. I quit coffee during the pandemic. Let’s see if that holds!
Adam: I’m caffeine-free as well. What’s the go-to breakfast?
Sam: Breakfasts are routines. You perform yours until you start performing another one for reasons of whim or happenstance: granola and yogurt; French toast; a single fried egg with toast and marmalade; cut fruit. The past couple of days, I’ve been big into a toasted bagel with a lot of butter and a single slice each of deli ham and Swiss cheese.
Adam: Last year, the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale gave you an honorary doctorate and described your last newsletter, What to Cook, as a “secular sermon.” What were you trying to do there and how does it apply to your new role with The Morning?
Sam: I just wanted to let readers know: Everything’s going to be all right. Even if it’s awful right now, even if you’ve never made mayonnaise, even if you’re scared. We’ll figure it out. We’ll get to the truth. We’ll make something sustaining no matter what’s happening in the world. Most of all, I think I wanted to leave people with this thought: You’re not alone. And that’s my goal with The Morning, too.
Adam: A leitmotif in the cooking newsletter was your life on the water. Tell us about it.
Sam: I’ve been messing around in boats since I was a kid at my grandparents’ home in Maine. I’ve worked on schooners and cruise boats in New York Harbor, run light-tackle fishing boats here in the city and on Long Island, sailed up and down the East Coast. There’s something fantastic about being out on the water, especially when the cell service drops away. It’s a kind of freedom. And you can put some amazing stuff in your eyeballs experiencing it.
Adam: Another leitmotif was the casual way you throw together meals. Your cookbook is called “No-Recipe Recipes.” What are your tips for people who want to graduate from paint-by-numbers chefs to improvisational chefs? For me, it was all about reps.
Sam: Sometimes I love following a recipe — it’s like learning a new piece of music. Other times I just want to jam. But you’re right that getting your reps in makes jamming a great deal easier. It brings you confidence: in your skills, in your taste. Make any recipe three or four times and it’s no longer the author’s. It’s yours.
Adam: How’d you get into journalism?
Sam: I wrote for my high school newspaper and something clicked. You can ask questions and write down the answers and deliver them to people and they’re happy to know — or really mad because they didn’t want anyone to know. I thought, If I can do that right, I’ll never have to get a real job.
Adam: You’re avuncular, even jolly. Are you one of these eternal optimists?
Sam: I don’t know that my family would agree with that description. So I’ll paraphrase Machiavelli. There is nothing more important than appearing to be an optimist.
Adam: You’re a student of New York Times history. Give us a fun story about the old days.
Sam: One of my first jobs at The Times was editing the travel and food writing of a political reporter named R.W. Apple Jr., whom everyone called Johnny. Johnny was larger than life in his interests and in his appetites. One of the great rumors was that his expenses were so extravagant that they had their own cost center, separate from any department in the newsroom. I certainly never saw them.
Cellphones weren’t prevalent then, and Johnny was always on the road, chasing politics, eating immoderate meals. I found myself on deadline with a story of his about a trip to Vancouver (“Conspire to arrive by ship,” he wrote). I needed to get 10 lines out of the piece so it would fit on the page, but he demanded to be consulted about cuts. And he was nowhere to be found. What to do?
I found a politics editor who said Johnny was in Ohio, talking to voters. That wasn’t much to go on. I thought for a minute, then went to a travel guide and made a list of all the four-star hotels in the state.
I found Johnny on the second call. He laughed and laughed. We were only five minutes late.
Adam: Your house is a bit of an animal sanctuary.
Sam: Two large dogs. One small cat, who is the bossiest. It can feel like a farm.
Adam: OK, lightning round. Favorite book about boats.
Sam: “Spartina,” by John Casey, from 1989. What a beautifully written novel. If I could spend a season working for Dick Pierce, the swamp Yankee protagonist of that excellent accounting of a complicated life in South County, Rhode Island, I’d do it. He’d no doubt make me as miserable on the water as on the shore, but I’m so fascinated by his world it’d be worth the pain. Plus, those sentences!
Adam: Favorite song about food.
Sam: Nas, “Fried Chicken”? Kacey Musgraves, “Biscuits”? UB40, “Red Red Wine”? Too many choices!
Adam: Favorite movie about New York.
Sam: Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” (Hat tip to “Metropolitan” and the original “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.”)
Adam: Favorite neighborhood you’ve lived in.
Sam: Red Hook, Brooklyn. I’ve been there close to 20 years.
Adam: Favorite dish in Brooklyn.
Sam: There are far too many great dishes here to choose just one. Sometimes I want a banh mi from Ba Xuyen in Sunset Park, or a calzone at Lucali in Carroll Gardens. Other times, dry pot chicken from Authentic Szechuan in Park Slope. Doubles at A&A in Bed-Stuy? She-crab soup at Gage & Tollner in Downtown Brooklyn? I’m into all of it.
Adam: Favorite thing to find at the farmers’ market.
Sam: Pea shoots, in a close tie with fairy-tale eggplants.
Adam: Favorite thing to cook.
Sam: Currently? Clay pot rice, in the rice cooker. That’s a fine dinner.
Adam: What scares you about this new role?
Sam: You mean writing a letter about news to millions and millions of people? Hoping that it’ll be the first thing they read in the morning while lying in bed? Hoping it’ll inform them, delight them, help them understand the world? What would scare me about that? See you in The Morning!