Q&A: Elisabeth Bumiller Reflects on Her Tenure as DC Bureau Chief at the Times

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Elisabeth Bumiller has led the New York Times’ coverage of Washington through a decade-long political hurricane. She is the second-longest-serving DC bureau chief in the paper’s history, taking over in September 2015 under President Obama, before covering the administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden and, now, the transition to a second Trump term. When that term starts, though, she’ll no longer be in post: at the end of this year, she will pass the torch to Richard Stevenson, currently her deputy. She is returning to her true love: reporting. “I told them it doesn’t matter who is president, I want to step down and go back to writing and reporting,” Bumiller told me recently, of a pre-election conversation she had with her bosses. 

Prior to serving as DC bureau chief, Bumiller spent over thirty years as a reporter, first at the Miami Herald, then at the Washington Post, and, finally, at the Times, covering everything from style to the Pentagon, and writing three books along the way. She has also had a front-row seat to history. Her first day on the White House beat was September 10, 2001. She was one year into her role as DC bureau chief when Trump was first elected president. In The Fourth Estate, a 2018 documentary that covered the internal workings of the Times in that period, she said, “Forget that I’m Washington bureau chief—I’m transfixed as an American citizen as to what happens next.” In a profile of Bumiller in Elle the same year, Peter Baker, the paper’s chief White House correspondent, is quoted as saying that “she has the best instincts, the absolute best in the business.” He added, “She’s one of us.” 

Last week, I spoke with Bumiller about what has kept her motivated through the years, what she is watching for as Trump returns to the White House, and what advice she has for the next generation of news leaders and journalists. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

LW: In The Fourth Estate, you likened Trump’s first term to a cyclone: exhausting, overwhelming, frustrating, maddening. It’s been six years since that documentary was made. I am wondering if anything has changed. How are you feeling right now? 

EB: It’s déjà vu all over again. It’s just so similar, with the late-night cabinet selections. Actually, it is much faster this time around; now it’s not the tweets, but the Truth Social posts. Just last night [Monday, November 25], he basically started a trade war before he was even in office, with two countries—Canada and Mexico—that he had negotiated a trade agreement with in his first term that he said was going to be “better than NAFTA.” So here we are again. I’ve forgotten what it was like, and it’s just all coming rushing back to us in the bureau. But it’s going to be different this time. We’re a little more prepared. We know we are going to need reinforcements—more editors, more reporters—so that’s what we’re doing. 

Now that you’ve had a bit of time to reflect, can you tell me about some of the highlights and most challenging moments of covering Trump’s first term?

One of my favorite moments was telling Mark Mazzetti, our investigations editor, that he’d won a Pulitzer Prize. I got the privilege of telling him, which was just fabulous. He couldn’t believe it. He had worked so hard. The low moments were just… the relentlessness of it. It never stopped. This is before we were dealing with Zoom and Google Hangouts, but I remember so many weekends where I would be just wiped out, and we would be working late on a Friday night dealing with whatever Trump was doing, then the next morning we’d get a call or email from Dean Baquet [then the executive editor of the Times] saying he wanted a conference call at eight-thirty in the morning. So it would start up again first thing. 

The night [in October 2020] when Trump got COVID and they flew him to Walter Reed Hospital, I was up until one or two in the morning. I remember editing in my nightgown at home. That is just some of the tension and stress on the staff and reporters who are working around the clock. It took its toll. On top of that, because of the pandemic, a lot of our reporters were more isolated. They lost their support system.

Was there any reprieve during the Biden administration?

I remember when Biden came into office, we assigned Katie Rogers a story on the fact that weekends were back in Washington. All of a sudden there wasn’t this crazy stuff going on all weekend; we could go out on Saturday again! It was a welcome change. Of course, with Biden there was a lot of legislation he was pushing through, and there were the various crises over the budget and the House that we were dealing with, but it was very different. It was like the Obama presidency.

Holding down the fort atop the Washington bureau for ten years is quite an accomplishment. How did you sustain yourself?

I really liked the job. I was just learning the role in the last year of the Obama presidency, then we were all expecting Hillary Clinton, and, of course, suddenly we had Trump. I was going to hang on through that, but I thought I would just do one year of Biden. But I stayed; at that point it was a lot easier. We were able to build up the bureau, I had hired a lot of people, and I wasn’t ready to go. It was a hard job, but maybe I just got used to it. 

What do you like about the job? 

The bureau is its own little ecosystem. The further up—the bigger the bureau—the less I touch journalism. But in the beginning I really liked helping reporters with their stories. It was very rewarding. Leading the bureau, I felt like I was contributing to the news every day: driving the story, driving the coverage. I’d been my own person for thirty years as a reporter, and all of a sudden I was part of a big team. I liked the camaraderie. Now it’s a hundred and eighty-five people in the Washington bureau, and I’m in charge of over sixty [of them]—much smaller than the mother ship in New York.

What are some of the principles that you’ve used to develop your leadership?

You get minimal training for leadership in journalism. I did do training for midlevel news leaders in Saint Petersburg, Florida, at the Poynter Institute. It was really helpful. In the end, what I learned—mostly the hard way—was, firstly, to share the credit and take the blame; as a boss, the buck stops with you. Secondly, listen. It’s really important, and you have to learn to listen differently to reporters than you do your sources, because you have to help them and guide them through. Third, empower people who work for you. I tend to be a control freak, so it was really important for me to give up some of my responsibilities. I just couldn’t do it all, and that’s what I learned at Poynter; they actually had my colleagues send in evaluations, and I saw that I was trying to do too much on my own, and people were feeling like I didn’t trust them. Fourth, don’t make any surprises for the bosses. Always overshare on any issues. 

In an age of what is being seen as decentralized fact-finding, what do you think are the benefits of having a larger newsroom?

A big national security team, White House team, climate team, visual investigations department, graphics department. We also get to travel quite a lot for stories. It gives us a lot of authority and enables us to do a lot of journalism we couldn’t otherwise do. 

Are there any downsides? 

Sometimes you have different desks working on the same story, so there is a lot more need for collaboration, consistent meetings. There is a lot of overlap, and you really have to over-communicate.

How has your own perception of journalism changed through your career?

My perceptions really changed during the Trump administration. I felt more of a mission to hold the government to account—that it was a really important task in a way I hadn’t quite felt before. Covering the White House and the Pentagon is important, but during the first Trump administration we were getting an unusual amount of praise for what we were doing. It actually made us feel a little uneasy—we are used to getting criticized by both the right and the left. I guess I felt more powerful; it made the work feel important. The same thing with Biden: just trying to find out what’s really going on and informing people, especially now that there are not as many news organizations around. Local news has dried up.

In a 2018 speech that you gave at the National Press Foundation, you said that “journalism is not failing, it is thriving,” and that this is “the golden age.” Do you see the potential for that golden age to continue now? 

Although it’s hard [at the Times], it’s harder than ever for a lot of other publications. Newspapers have folded since I gave that speech. But big local websites have also risen up—the Texas Tribune and Mississippi Today and the Baltimore Banner—so it’s not all dire out there. And there is the local journalism fellowship. It’s a start, and this is another opportunity to build it, with this administration again. 

What prompted your decision to return to reporting from next year? 

I loved a lot of the job [as bureau chief], but there were a lot of times I thought, God, I would love to do that story. It is time for somebody else to have this job—but I didn’t want to retire. The best part of being a journalist is going out and talking to people: getting out of the newsroom and talking to people in Washington and hopefully other parts of the country. I have amazing memories of being a reporter, and I just thought this would give me more freedom. It will be an adjustment, though; I am nervous about it. I haven’t written in ten years—I’ve only edited a lot of stories—but I think I can remember how to write. I have a novel sitting in the drawer, too.

There’s something so exhilarating about being a reporter. After a really good interview, you think, My god, I got it; I can’t believe they are paying me to do this. I remember that when I worked for the Washington Post, I was in Lucknow, in northern India, and I had a really good interview and I took a rickshaw back, through the cows and the cars, to where I was staying. I just thought this was the best thing in the entire world. Then, always, after reporting, you actually have to structure the piece, and write it, fix it. The first draft was always really hard, but then the second draft was fun because you could make it better. Of course, a lot of times I didn’t have that luxury. I just had to meet a deadline. But those are the things I like about it. 

What advice would you give to early-career journalists?

We still tell people to get out into the country and work for a medium-size organization, but it’s harder now because there are fewer of them. A lot of people now start from social media, but I would just say get a job where you are reporting and writing in a place. I know it’s getting harder and harder. But make sure you aren’t just rewriting wire copy, express stories, briefings. Make sure you are getting out and talking to people and writing. I am a big fan of applicants who were editors of their college paper. That shows me they are really interested in and dedicated to journalism. 

Broadly, what do you think Washington reporters and newsroom leaders need to focus on to manage the next four years? 

At the Times, we were so taken aback by the middle-of-the-night tweets and the early-morning tweets; we were kind of just covering it every five minutes, and then there would be another crisis. We are certainly still going to cover a tweet like [the one] about the tariffs, but I like to think that we will be putting it more in context and not just reacting instantly to everything; that just distracts. That’s the main thing we are focusing on, and continuing to develop our investigative muscle.

[Newsroom leaders should] just make tough-minded journalism that’s fair but doesn’t cave. There is a lot of pushback from the White House and sources. So stand up for your people, give them direction, and stand up for your stories. Just be tough and brave.

Other notable stories:

• Yesterday, Yoon Suk Yeol, the president of South Korea, stunned that country and the wider world by going on TV and declaring martial law, accusing the opposition of “antistate” behavior and invoking vague threats linked to the country’s neighbor, North Korea. The move theoretically placed the media under military control—but as Daisuke Wakabayashi and Su-Hyun Lee report for the New York Times, the press appeared to be galvanized, rather than cowed; even papers more sympathetic to Yoon’s party condemned his declaration, while reporters quickly got to work covering it. (“At no point did we consider stopping or limiting coverage,” one editor said.) Amid an outcry from the public and lawmakers, Yoon quickly reversed course, but as the Times notes, the events “offered a glimpse of the risks” posed by rising threats to press freedom in South Korea.

• According to various reports overnight, Trump could be preparing to ditch Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host he picked to serve as his defense secretary, as media scrutiny of his past conduct intensifies; yesterday, for example, NBC reported that Hegseth “drank in ways that concerned his colleagues at Fox” right up until his recent departure from the network. The CNN media reporter Brian Stelter noted yesterday morning that Fox had scarcely covered the latest allegations against Hegseth—but we later learned that he is expected to do an interview on the network this week. And, in the next hour, Hegseth’s mother will appear on Fox & Friends to discuss a private email, reported recently by the Times, in which she called him an abuser of women. (She has disavowed that sentiment.)

• Meanwhile, Erik Wemple, the Washington Post media columnist, skewered Fox hosts’ habit of bashing the mainstream media—and declaring it irrelevant (in line, at least recently, with many liberal pundits)—while often citing its reporting on air. Host after host on Fox references stories “from the Post, the New York Times, Reuters, CNN, Politico, Axios and so on—all outlets heavy with reporters who bring scoops to bear on topics dear to Fox News viewers,” Wemple writes. Their “reliance on mainstream organizations underscores the permanence of aggregation on cable news, a model that stretches back to the medium’s beginnings: Cite a scoop from a newspaper, analyze, repeat.”

• In the UK, journalists at The Guardian and its sister paper, The Observer, walked off the job in protest of the planned sale of the latter title to Tortoise Media, a startup. In recent days, leaders at the papers and the trust that owns them moved to offer assurances to Observer journalists—including that the trust would stay on as a part-owner and play a role on Tortoise’s boards—though as Press Gazette’s Dominic Ponsford reports, they don’t appear to be backing off the planned sale. Ponsford also reports that journalists with the US edition of The Guardian said they won’t cross their colleagues’ picket line.
• And, for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, Ian Karbal (a former CJR fellow) reports on a walkout among journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that began more than two years ago and is now the longest ongoing strike in the country, according to a labor union. In that time, “enough employees kept working to keep the paper publishing,” Karbal writes, contributing to “bitter divisions among the Post-Gazette’s journalists.” Tensions with management have remained sharp, too: a recent meeting between the union and the paper’s lawyers ended when a union leader threw a chair at a wall.

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Lauren Watson is a Delacorte fellow at CJR.