What are the most significant cases, projects, or transactions that you and your legal team have recently been involved in?

The New Yorker won three Pulitzer Prizes in 2025, including for a podcast series “In the Dark,” which did detailed and complex investigative reporting into the killing of civilians by U.S. soldiers in Haditha, Iraq. The legal department was proud to support and defend this important journalism.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

It is important to have plans in place before hand, and to have clear lines of communication with senior leadership. The legal department must always strive to maintain a reputation within the organisation as an ally and trusted advisor.

General counsel often speak of the need to be strategic to reach the pinnacle of the profession. What does being strategic mean to you? 

The strategy is simple, but not easy to execute. It involves three prongs: technical legal expertise; knowledge of the business; and soft skills of listening and building consensus. Legal expertise is obviously fundamental. It means staying abreast of recent developments in the law, and understanding other areas of law that impact your company. Business knowledge includes not only the details of your particular client, but understanding the sector as well, and the broader forces at work. Finally, soft skills are critical for earning the trust of your client, and making sure they involve you in the early stages of critical decisions, not just to fix things when they go wrong.

We are currently living through a time of geopolitical change, and the world order that we have come to take for granted for many years is being rewritten. Does this affect your company’s risk profile and, if so, what are you doing to mitigate this?

There are clearly increasing risks to journalism and independent reporting in the U.S. and around the globe. Threats to journalists are very serious, and we are making efforts to increase the physical, digital, and legal safety of our reporters so they can do their important work. Often this means developing resources and expertise that the legal department did not formerly need to have. But, as the times change, so do the demands on the legal departments.