Podbit · The Rest Is Entertainment
The New York Times has created the role of Head of Canon, appointing Gilbert Cruz to manage their curated ranking products. These lists — from best novels to best films — now outperform reviews commercially, last longer as evergreen content, and have become the publication's most powerful market-moving cultural products.
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At 46:50 · chapter starts 45:20
Marina Hyde traces the genealogy of the canon list: from its 14th-century Biblical origins to the listicle era of BuzzFeed and on to the present moment, where the New York Times has made it a full-time C-suite appointment [1] — Marina Hyde "The New York Times has created the role of Head of Canon, appointing Gilbert Cruz to manage their curated ranking products. These lists — f…" 46:50 . The key insight is that these lists aren't just quick editorial products — they are the publication's most commercially successful outputs, generating evergreen traffic, driving book reprints, and repositioning legacy media brands as curators of taste in a noisy, crowded cultural landscape. The Guardian's ranked lists consistently outperform reviews; the New York Times' best books of the 21st century drove a rediscovery of Lonesome Dove. Richard Osman enthusiastically endorses the format, describing how the Guardian's top-100 books feature allowed readers to dig into individual critics' lists — navigating from the aggregate top 100 to Stephen King's personal favourites, for example — as a model for how lists can do more than just rank. He then announces his own forthcoming bonus episode series applying the same format to US sitcoms, UK game shows, and other categories, with the first instalment — the greatest US sitcom — featuring John Robbins and Maisie Adam and timed to honour the recently-deceased director James Burrows.
The New York Times recently appointed Gilbert Cruz as its first-ever Head of Canon, signalling that curated cultural lists have become one of the publication's most commercially important products.
Marina Hyde traced the word 'canon' back to the 1300s, when it referred to the collection of Biblical books accepted as genuine by the Christian Church, before evolving into its modern cultural usage.
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