The Washington Post is and has been the greatest historic competitor of the New York Times. Half of me, though, the unselfish part of me that is just a journalist, is thrilled. I want newspapers to succeed. Let's take the Guardian, which is a new competitor in the digital age. Does it make me nervous that they compete with us and in fact beat us on the Snowden story? Yes. The part of me that's a competitive journalist and wants to fight and play says: bring them on! It's more fun that way.

I grew up in the traditional American newspaper world with a morning paper and an afternoon paper competing with each other beat by beat by beat. It was the most fun I've ever had. And it was great for journalism.

We, in the New York Times, have not yet figured out how to grow our international readership. We started a website in China, which the Chinese government has blocked, but it has a pretty healthy readership. The Guardian, for instance, has gotten tremendous growth through its website in the US. We have to figure out how to go after readership in different parts of the world.

I know this is going to get me in trouble, but I'll say it: The whole notion that I am supposed to constantly tweet is ridiculous. There are a lot of journalists at the New York Times who tweet. I am not opposed to it. But I don't have enough time. And editors don't have much to say. My world consists of this office, this floor, my apartment and wonderful conversations with our reporters and correspondents - all of them know a lot more about the world than I do.

My job is to cover the hell out of the story, very aggressively. The real place to be courageous if you're a news organization is where you put your people to cover the story. It's making sure that you have people going to Baghdad. It's making sure that you figure out how to cover the war in Afghanistan. While the journalist in me completely stands with them, the editor of the New York Times in me thinks my job is to figure out what the hell happened and cover the hell out of it, and that's more important than some symbolic drawing on the front page.

I always thought that digital first was a simplistic notion, and I am not even sure quite what it means. It should be stories first. Let's take the Paris story: the New York Times covered it all day, we held nothing back. Everything we learned, we published online. Then, when you approach your print deadline, you have to do two things. You have to polish those stories that are online because print is less forgiving of mistakes. Secondly, in an ideal world, you pick one thing that will feel fresh and compelling to people in the morning when they pick up the print paper.

The New York Times is and has always been a digital leader. The report only cited some areas where we fell down.