New York Times Gun Culture Reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff On His New Beat

The Weekly Reload Podcast

We've been highlighting the fact that The New York Times, the largest paper in the country, has finally hired a gun-beat reporter. So, this week, we invited him on the show to talk about his approach and goals.

Reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff has started consistently doing gun stories for The Grey Lady, as The Times has long been known. It's not his first assignment. I also wouldn't call it his most challenging since he went from active-duty service in Afghanistan to covering it and, later, the war in Ukraine.

Still, as Gibbons-Neff readily admits, covering guns in America for a paper like The Times is not without its own challenges. One of the things he has to navigate in order to find sources is The Times' reputation, especially given its aggressive editorial stance in favor of new gun restrictions and bans.

But he agreed his background and continual focus on firearms should help him produce better stories than many in the gun world might expect. And he said he's going to work to earn the gun-owning community's trust that he'll be fair, mainly by demonstrating it in the pieces he publishes.

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Special Guest: Thomas Gibbons-Neff.