Landman is the metropolitan editor of The New York Times, in charge of the largest section of the "paper of record," and he's just been promoted. Just three months after becoming the College's newest alumni trustee, Landman was named assistant managing editor for enterprise at the Times. As soon as a new metropolitan editor is assigned, he will assume the new position, for which he will manage long-term and inter-sectional projects. Landman, a history major who never worked in journalism before graduating from college, took an interesting route on his way to becoming one of the top 10 people at The New York Times.
The apple doesn't fall far ...
Landman describes his father as a "crusading college journalist." As the editor of The Brown Daily Herald in the 1930s, Landman's father took a bold stance against fraternities. Landman's parents met at PM Magazine in New York City, where Mr. Landman was a labor reporter and Mrs. Landman was a clerk.
After marrying, the Landmans went to China in 1948, where they covered the Chinese Revolution; Mr. Landman was on the radio for NBC, while both worked on a freelance basis for various American newspapers.
They returned to New York, where Jonathan was born in 1952. After a year in India and three years in Denver while Landman's father was blacklisted by McCarthyites, the family returned to New York. "That's where I stayed until I went away to Amherst," Landman said. "I actually remember, I went to a college night at Stuyvesant [High School]. I didn't know much about colleges ... My knowledge was pretty sketchy, to put it mildly. I was walking with my father and we walked past a classroom that said 'Amherst.' I asked him if it was any good, and he said it was."
"We went in, and there was a green dean by the name of Simpson-it's astounding that I remember this-and he was very appealing," Landman continued.
Landman later visited the College, enjoyed his visit and enrolled in the fall of 1967.
Music, law and journalism
Landman didn't work for the college paper-instead, he spent time with music. "I played the cello like crazy. I was in what was then the Amherst-Mt. Holyoke Orchestra. I became president of the umbrella student music group with some Latin name, 'Collegium Musicum' or something like that," Landman said. "Music was a big part of my life."
Landman graduated magna cum laude, but his plans for life after Amherst were far from concrete. "I was one of those people who woke up one morning sometime into my senior year and realized that there wouldn't be college the next year or any kind of school," said Landman. "Since I hadn't taken pre-med classes and ... had no particular ambition, I applied to law school."
Landman went so far as to send in his law school deposit before he was offered a one-year green dean position in the admissions office. "Getting the green dean job saved me," he said.
After his year in the admissions office, Landman tried to enter the world of professional journalism. He looked for jobs at local papers: the Berkshire Eagle, The Burlington Free Press and the Torrington Register Citizen. "To say I couldn't get in the door would be an exaggeration," Landman said. "I couldn't even get a letter answered."
In late 1975, Landman made his breakthrough into the literary world as a freelance copy editor for National Scholastic. After his first project, an American history textbook, Landman got "a real staff job" as assistant editor of Senior Scholastic Magazine. Despite the title of editor, Landman's job was primarily writing, and he liked it.
After two years at Senior Scholastic, Landman decided that he wanted to pursue journalism "in a little more ambitious way." In fall of 1977, he enrolled in Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, one of the finest journalism schools in the world.
From blooper to super
After graduating from Columbia in 1978, Landman was hired by American Banker magazine, where he worked for three weeks. "The only thing I did that got any attention was that I made a huge blooper of a mistake on a quarterly earnings report," Landman recalled. "It's what the rookies of the rookies do ... and I managed to screw it up."
"While I was busy recovering from that, I got a call from Fred Friendly, whose seminar I had taken at Columbia, and he offered me a job," Landman said.
Friendly, one of the pioneers of television, had been president of CBS News in the 1960s. After resigning as president in 1966 when CBS aired "I Love Lucy" instead of the Fulbright hearings, Friendly worked with the Ford Foundation in establishing public television. He was the kind of mentor a young journalist dreams of-a bona fide living legend.
Friendly was teaching, writing a book and working on a seminar series regarding law, media and society for PBS when Landman joined him in 1978. "I helped him with all of those things," Landman said. "It was very, very exciting for a young person to be in the middle of that world ... It was a very wonderful year."
A little more ambitious
In 1979, Landman began working for the Chicago Sun-Times. He left with many others in early 1984, when Rupert Murdoch bought the paper. Landman then returned to New York to work for Newsday. In 1985, he became deputy city editor of The New York Daily News.
Then, in 1987, Landman received another life-changing phone call. "I got a call one day from the [New York Times] national editor, Dave Jones," Landman said. Jones asked if Landman would take a test to become a copy editor.
"In my smug, still-youthful arrogance I said certainly not. I had this great job at The Daily News, why would I want to be a copy editor? [But] after I put down the phone and told people about this, people started telling me I was a complete idiot. It dawned on me that I was probably a complete idiot-if you have an opportunity to come to The Times, you're pretty stupid not to take it."
Landman called Jones back, and was soon working as a copy editor for the national desk of The Times. Landman then became assistant national editor, where he mainly worked with correspondents in the western United States.
After stints as the assistant metropolitan editor, the daily assignment editor and the deputy Washington editor, Landman edited for the Sunday "Week in Review" section, but he continued to change departments within The Times until 1999 when he was named metropolitan editor.
Very ambitious journalism
In late May 2002, Landman shook hands with George Rupp, president of Columbia University, and accepted the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service on behalf of The Times staff.
"It's quite extraordinary, particularly because that Pulitzer Prize was not mine," says Landman. "That was the prize for the paper's coverage of all of the events of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan, and the creation of a special section-a role in which I played a part, but only a part. There were a lot of people who did a hell of a lot of great work, so I was accepting it on behalf of lots of people ... that those people chose me to take it really meant a lot."
Landman oversaw "Portraits of Grief," a section in The Times that profiled the victims of the 9/11 attacks. The reporters were told "not to do [the profiles] as obituaries, with the obligations of obituaries, and to really ignore for the most part the statistics of people's lives-where they went to school, what their rank is business was, and really to isolate a trait that stood out ... so they acted as a kind of mirror on people's memories."
More recently, Landman emerged as the closest thing to a hero to be found in the Jayson Blair scandal. Blair, formerly a Times reporter, was guilty of plagiarizing other journalists' work and fabricating facts. As metro editor, Landman was the first to point out Blair's inconsistencies to The Times' senior management.
Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, characterized Landman's journalistic strengths in the staff memo announcing Landman's most recent promotion to assistant managing editor for enterprise: "The main tool of [Landman's] trade is ideas, which he coaxes out of people in profusion, refines and perfects, while supplying an ample quantity of his own. He is deeply curious and instinctively skeptical."
Amherst, brave Amherst
"In the sense that I've found that I can get interested in almost anything, maybe my liberal arts education contributed to that," Landman said. "Or maybe it is that quality in me that made me want to have a liberal arts education. Call [it] a short attention span or whatever you want, but there must be some relationship somewhere."
He added that when he was a first-year student the College's encouragement of intellectual humility impacted him strongly. "I came from a home in which there were many certitudes, and this was an attack on certitudes. It was an appeal for open-mindedness, and for respect for the complexity of life and things ... it made a big impression."
As Landman said in his College trustee personal statement, "The New York Times, where I work, is a room full of smart, accomplished, independent-minded people. They are confident types; proud to be ornery. Respect for authority is not high on the list of qualities they admire. To lead them ... is to be reminded daily of the central lesson I gratefully took from Amherst 29 years ago ... the certainty that no matter how deep your knowledge and powerful your convictions, you had better be ready to be wrong."
At the end of his interview-"if you need anything else, give me another call"-Landman's voice is again striking, the combination of a sportscaster's energetic snap and a counselor's kind wisdom.