Bill Keller

In this week’s giddily Obama-centric edition of The New Yorker—you had the illuminated O in “Yorker”; the “ELECTION SPECIAL” tab on the outside cover flap; and more than 35,000 words inside about the election—the longest story in the magazine was assigned to none other than the magazine’s editor, David Remnick. His 12,000-word opus on race and politics included dispatches from two different trips to Chicago and one to New Orleans.

It was filed in the magazine under: “A Reporter at Large.”

“As much as I love editing, reporting and writing is a way for me to get out of the house a little bit, metaphorically” said Mr.  read more »

A source tells us that Alissa Rubin has been named the new Baghdad bureau chief of The New York Times.

Ms. Rubin has been with the Times since 2007, and before that worked in Iraq for The Los Angeles Times. In Seth Mnookin's stirring profile of the Baghdad bureau in the December 2008 Vanity Fair, he says that Ms. Rubin has been basically functioning as the bureau chief all year since Jim Glanz has been home after suffering a neck injury (and he has recently been reassigned to the investigations unit).  read more »

The Observer's Leon Neyfakh just called in to tell us that at a newsstand at the corner of 43rd and Lexington that there is still a mob of people buying yesterday's Times.

Right now, about 50 people are queued up to hand over a $1.50 to get a copy of yesterday's post-election OBAMA-bannered edition. When Leon walked by the vendor about an hour ago, he noticed that the there was a big stack of yesterday's edition that was tied up and untouched.

An hour later, word must have gotten out this is the place where you can still find one.

The New York Times has hired internally to replace Dwight Garner at The Book Review after he moved to the daily reviewing beat. The nod goes to Laura Marmor, a deputy editor for the Travel Section. In her new job as Senior Editor, she'll be making a "broad range of review assignments" and help put the section together each week while "collaborating with our editorial team to upgrade our enterprise projects," writes Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus in a memo.

In September, The Times replaced reviews editor and Rome-bound Rachel Donadio with a copy editor at the paper, Greg Cowles.

Memo after the jump:  read more »

Last week, Executive Editor Bill Keller told The New York Times newsroom at his bi-annual State of the Newsroom address that the reporting job to cover the Obama White House would be "pretty goddamn amazing." Likewise, Jill Abramson gushed to a crowd of Times readers on Election Night that the Obama administration would change Washington "hugely" and that "the Obamas have a kind of celebrity that remind me a little bit of the Kennedys in 1960."

Okay!

So who are the lucky folks who get to get the most prized job at the paper?

Michael Calderone of Politico is reporting that Obama campaign beat reporter Jeff Zeleny, foreign affairs reporter Helene Cooper, and Times Magazine contributor Peter Baker will all be heading to the White House for the paper. Additionally, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, the current Bush White House reporter (not exactly a prized job) will stay on the beat.

Newspapers dead?

Today's day-after the election issue of The New York Times—the one with the OBAMA banner headline that the paper's masthead decided on after consulting some of its readers—is selling out fast. (Need proof: Check out this photo from Gawker.)

The paper's spokeswman, Catherine Mathis, has told us that the paper is printing an extra 50,000 copies for the afternoon rush at transit-hubs like Grand Central, Penn Station, and Port Authority. It's a veritable P.M. editition of The Times!

"We had increased our print run for single copy sales today by about 35%," she writes. "In 2004 we saw an increase in sales of around 50,000 copies the day after the election and based on what we've seen today, we expect to significantly surpass those sales.  read more »

Writing for The Big Money, Chadwick Matlin, asks, "The election is over. What happens to the political press?" (This comes via Jim Romenesko.)

To find out, Mr. Matlin asked The New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller what happens after November 4th. Mr. Keller once again asserted that there will be no more job cuts at The Times. He also explained how the paper will save money starting November 5th:

[t]here will be some significant cost savings, mainly thanks to the fact that we are not traveling with a whole constellation of candidates, often sharing the pooled cost of pricey private campaign aircraft.  read more »

Even though the election and economic crisis have pushed the Iraq war off the front—or even the first dozen—pages of newspapers, the December 2008 issue of Vanity Fair features an article by Seth Mnookin in which he reports on life inside The New York Times' Baghdad bureau. The story is not yet online, but it's full of interesting points, including details of "internecine warfare that once wracked the bureau." Update: November 4, 2008: Here it is: The New York Times’s Lonely War.

According to Mr. Mnookin, maintaining a presence in Iraq costs The Times "upwards of $3 million a year.  read more »

The "investment fund" that's bankrolled over a dozen hires for BizDay (the one we told you about this morning) has allowed the paper to procure yet another writer.

This time it's Jenna Wortham from Wired.com. Here's the memo that was sent out to the business staff:

Larry Ingrassia, Damon Darlin and Vindu Goel are pleased to announce that Jenna Wortham will be joining The Times as a reporter covering how companies are using the Internet to change the way we work and live, as part of Business Day's expansion of our technology coverage online.
Jenna, currently a San Francisco-based culture reporter at Wired.com, will write about Web start-ups, emerging Internet business models and tech culture for The Times's Bits blog and our newly launched Internet page on NYTimes.

 read more »

Felix Gillette talks to MSNBC president Phil Griffin, who says, "A lot of people like to make fun of cable... They think it’s something for people who don’t get news. No. It’s for people who really understand news, want depth and want it from people they connect to."

John Koblin gets the details of Bill Keller's budget talks with New York Times staffers, including news about a special "investment fund" to help pay for Web site growth. Mr. Keller tells The Observer, "The money has gone to hire a small number of editors, reporters and producers. Most of the vertical expansions are already launched, and some of their work has appeared in the printed page as well.  read more »

At first, there was good news at New York Times executive editor Bill Keller’s semi-annual State of the Newsroom town hall meeting, the supposed informal name of which has now become official: “Throw Stuff at Bill.”

There would be no job cuts.

But of course, there’s a plenty big trade-off for protecting a staff.

For one, you’ve got to lose your stand-alone Metro and sports sections. It means new projects and some investigative projects are suspended. It also means that you might get “more exotic and garish species of advertisements,” said Mr. Keller.

And: “It will mean, I’m sure, that our hiring is even more selective than before.  read more »

At yesterday's Times State of the Newsroom meeting, a staffer asked executive editor Bill Keller if the paper was running out of money. Mr. Keller handed the mic over to New York Times President and General Manager Scott Heekin-Canedy who said, definitively, no.

"We have the ability to pay our debt, we're not concerned about it, we're watching it carefully in these credit markets, our liquidity is sound and our pension funds are fully funded and will be all through 2009 and beyond as far as we can see," he said.

The staffer also asked about an item written by Silicon Alley Insider co-founder Henry Blodget that followed this premise with an argument about the Times Company's financial position:

the New York Times (NYT) is approaching the point where it will have to manage its business primarily to conserve cash and avoid defaulting on its debt.  read more »

Bill Keller wrote a speech for each of the three "Throw Stuff at Bill" sessions he had today. [Update, October 28th: The Times sessions are actually called "Throw Stuff at Bill."]

Highlights include: No Coldplay! No layoffs! The paper came under budget this year! Lots and lots of praise to Larry Ingrassia and BizDay for coverage of the financial crisis! Updates on copy flow! Or, make that last a low-light ...

Here's what the Times staff heard today (n.b.: these are remarks as prepared):

In case you're wondering, the music you've been listening to is not Coldplay.
It's Verdi, and it is not a random choice. Does anyone want to guess why we are listening to Rigoletto? No, it has nothing to do with the fact that the protagonist of the opera is a deformed court jester.

 read more »

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller denied that there will be any further newsroom job cuts at the Times this morning at his State of the Newsroom meeting, "Throw Stuff at Bill." [Update, October 28th: The Times sessions are actually called "Throw Stuff at Bill."]

"The answer is no," said Mr. Keller, according to an attendee. "No, I do not see another round of newsroom staff reductions on the horizon."

He said that hiring will be "even more selective than before," but the goal is to avoid painful cuts that other newspapers have made.

Earlier this year, the Times cut 100 newsroom positions, leaving the total newsroom body count around 1200—bigger than any other single newspaper's newsroom in the country.  read more »

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller defended last weekend's front-page story on radical William Ayers and his connection to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Mr. Keller writes an e-mail to Politico.com's Michael Calderone:

"We've reported the Ayers relationship before, and we had it on our ‘to do’ list for a while to take a more comprehensive look... When the McCain campaign began to make it a major focal point of ads and stump speeches, we decided the time was right.”

“It didn't take any prodding... When the conversation on something controversial reaches a certain level, curious readers look to The Times to help them sort the facts from the fictions and figure out what to make of it. That's what we did.”

Steve Schmidt, a senior advisor for John McCain, attacked The New York Times today. He said, among other things, that the Times is “an organization that is completely, totally 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be.” And that “whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization.”

All rather typical stuff from Camp McCain. Michael Calderone reached out to Bill Keller, and, in a sober response, the Times' executive editor didn't take Schmidt's bait:

"The New York Times is committed to covering the candidates fully, fairly and aggressively. It's our job to ask hard questions, fact-check their statements and their advertising, examine their programs, positions, biographies and advisors.

 read more »

Emma Gilbey Keller, the wife of New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, has a book review this Sunday in The New York Times Book Reviewfor her new book, The Comeback: Seven Stories of Women Who Went From Career to Family and Back Again.

Eugenie Allen, the reviewer for the book, is a fan. Ms. Allen says the book is a "breezy, feel-good book," and only quibbles with Ms. Keller's choice of people for the book to fit her larger theme of women who transition back to work after they leave to raise the kids. (Ms. Keller argues all her subjects are middle class; Ms. Allen disagrees.)  read more »

Does print journalism matter in this election?

“It’s obvious, and no crime against humanity, that the world has many, many places to turn for information, misinformation, analysis, rants, etc,” wrote Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, in an e-mail. “We—The Times, The Washington Post, Politico, the news outlets that aim to be aggressive, serious and impartial—don’t  dominate the conversation the way we once did, and that’s fine, except it means some excellent hard work gets a little muffled.

“But we do want our work to be noticed,” he wrote, “and I’ve been repeatedly surprised at the rich, important stories that fail to resonate the way they deserve.  read more »

Between Joe Sexton's "maudlin" note, his follow-up request to "Be Not Afraid," and now the latest, an invitation to drink with and yell at Bill Keller, it's a hard time for the Metro department; there are certainly a lot of invitations to drink.

Here's Keller's e-mail to the Metro team from today:

Folks,
I know this has been a hard time for Metro, and I know it will take more than a beer to make up for the loss of your section and the attendant anxieties.
But I figure a beer can't hurt. I'm buying.

Come, drink, vent if you like, or just drown your sorrows. Next [redacted] on [redacted]
Best,
Bill

On Sept. 10 at 5:30 p.m., The Times will round up the newsroom on the third floor at its Eighth Avenue building to toast the accomplishments of the 32 reporters and editors who covered the Olympics—the majority of them from the sports department. There will be Champagne and egg rolls to reward the “stunning” coverage The Times produced on the Web, and in the newspaper, wrote executive editor Bill Keller in a staff memo. In an earlier staff e-mail, he lauded the staff and subjected the note, “Our Gold Medalists.”

But in these difficult times, journalistic success is not a protection against the inevitable downscaling affecting the newspaper industry.  read more »

And the memos just keep on coming. Here's Bill Keller's statement to the staff of The New York Times about the consolidation of Metro and Sports:

To the Staff:
As you've learned from Arthur's message, beginning next month the paper will be reconfigured. Metro news will appear in the A-book along with International and National news. Sports will be combined with Bizday, except on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, when we will offer freestanding sports sections. I just want to elaborate a little on what this means for the newsroom.

The aim, of course, is to save money -- and, importantly, to do it without cutting back coverage.

 read more »

Media Mob has learned that The New York Times will make an announcement later today that it plans to cut the number of sections it has in the paper during some days of the week and it will fold in the Metro Section and Sports section into other sections of the newspaper.

According to newsroom sources, the Metro Section is moving into the A-section and the Sports section will move into the Business section for some portion of the week.

The move is being made to save money on printing. According to one newsroom source, neither metro editor Joe Sexton nor sports editor Tom Jolly was "thrilled with the decision, but they understood.  read more »

It's not every Sunday that you pick up The New York Times and find Bill Keller's byline all over the paper. And, according to Mr. Keller, there might be a Sunday someday soon when there won't even be a paper for him to write in.

Stealing a page from the David Remnick playbook, Mr. Keller decided to drop his editor's cap and rewind back to the good old days when he was a senior writer pointing his critical eye to far-off places. In yesterday's Times, Mr. Keller's byline appeared on the cover of Week in Review and Book Review sections for articles about the  read more »

Bill Schmidt, an assistant managing editor and 27-year New York Times veteran, is moving to the International Herald Tribune to become the paper's "Editor, Global editions."

Mr. Schmidt is the administration-man of the Times newsroom—the one who sends out emails reminding reporters to file their expenses—and he'll have a similar, if expanded, role at The Times' sister publication. Bill Keller writes in a memo, "He will be, in effect, the chief operating officer of the Trib newsroom, the principle liaison with the publisher and with the Executive Editor of The Times."

Memo after the jump:  read more »

Are the deadlines at The New York Times about to change?

Moments ago, a big-bylined memo from Keller-Abramson-Landman-Geddes went out staff-wide to reporters and editors saying that, essentially, to make it easier on the digital side, copy flow at the paper needs to change.

They compare their current system to “an old-fashioned electrical utility.”

Too much copy is dumped at the same time, and the digital-side people have not a lot of time to deal with it all. No conclusions have been reached, though! So it’s time for the Times to do what they do best: setup a big committee to talk about it.

Susan Edgerley will lead, and deputies will help. Decisions will come in the “months to come.”

Full memo after the jump.  read more »

The Times has no official anonymous sourcing rules—no "two source rule" or anything like that—but they do often pass around internal documents to serve as guidelines. The paper's public editor, Clark Hoyt, recently recruited some Columbia J-school students and had them take some sample papers from 2004—when Al Siegal and Bill Keller last sent out an anonymous source guideline sheet—and compare them to 2007, and they found that anonymous sources had basically dropped by half at the paper.

But reporters shouldn't feel afraid to use them! Mr. Keller sent out a "refresher course" memo last night. There are helpful tips like: "There is, on the face of it, something ludicrous about a government or corporate "spokesman" insisting on not being identified by name; we should push such sources to speak for attribution."  read more »

Longtime editor Jim Roberts is being given the title "associate managing editor" and will be added to the Times masthead. He works with Jon Landman on the digital side and his duties remain exactly the same. Here's the memo from Keller and Landman:  read more »

David Chen, the longtime Trenton reporter for The Times, is replacing Diane Cardwell as the paper's City Hall bureau chief, according to an internal memo. Mr. Chen will join Michael Barbaro and Fernanda Santos in Room 9.

Mr. Chen's departure means there's a vacancy in Trenton, but at this point it's unclear whether the paper has any intention of filling it.  read more »

David Barboza, the Times' business reporter based in Shanghai, has won the paper's internal business award, the Nathaniel Nash Award. The award is named after Mr. Nash, who died in a plane crash in Croatia while on assignment for the Times. With the award, Mr. Barboza gets a check for $1,500!

After the jump, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller's memo to the staff.  read more »

The Media Mob has learned that longtime New York Times editor Mike Oreskes is leaving the company for the Associated Press.

Mr. Oreskes, who is currently the editor of the Times-owned International Herald Tribune, has been working in one capacity or another under the Times umbrella for the past 27 years. Before he took his position as executive editor of IHT in 2005, he was the deputy managing editor of The Times for Bill Keller, and an assistant managing editor under Howell Raines before that.

At the AP, he'll become the managing editor of the wire service's U.S. News department, a newly created department there.

Update! AP has confirmed our report with a press release. Follow the jump to read it ...  read more »

There will be layoffs at The Times. In an emotionally charged memo, Bill Keller writes that the vast majority of the 100 newsroom job cuts he announced back in February will come through buyouts, but the paper is "forced to resort" to laying the rest off. He said the paper will not disclose numbers or names in this "usettling and dispiriting time."

In the memo, he vehemently thanks reporters and editors at the paper for their service, as well as the Sulzbergers, and then says, "it is time to regroup."

He writes:

Most important, we retain the strongest team of talented journalists in the business, and they—you—remain the key to all of our ambitions.

Now it is time to regroup and move forward. In the coming weeks we will be working with department heads to reorganize and reimagine our coverage to ensure the quality journalism that is our standard. When we met in the Times Center in February, I told you that we were facing two seemingly contradictory challenges in the coming year. On the one hand, we must reduce our staffing and costs. On the other hand, we must do whatever we can to strengthen our competitive position. As I said then, that will mean our staff cuts will be offset a little by some investments to ensure, among other things, that we are well equipped to navigate the passage to our digital future.

Entire memo after the jump ...  read more »

Barry Bearak is on his way home. Here's the statement from Bill Keller, sent to us through the Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis:

Barry's family, friends and colleagues are overjoyed that the court threw out the preposterous charges against him, and that he is on his way home. His only offense was honest journalism, telling Zimbabwe's story at a time of tormented transition. He had no intention of becoming part of that story.  read more »

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The New York Times announced that it's all but a done deal that the paper will have to layoff staffers in the newsroom.

The drop-dead deadline is fast approaching for the staffers in The New York Times newsroom to raise their hand and volunteer for a buyout. An internal memo from the paper's assistant managing editor, Bill Schmidt, just went out and said that "we expect" that the buyout numbers aren't looking good and that for the first time the paper will be forced to cut the newsroom through layoffs.

"While layoffs have become all too common across our industry, this is the first time the newsroom as a whole has confronted that blunt reality, and we approach it with a heavy heart," he said in the e-mail.

The entire memo is below:  read more »

At a little after 3 p.m. on Monday, April 7, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller grabbed a microphone and took to a landing on one of the floating red-walled staircases that climb up into his brand-new newsroom’s skylit clerestory. It was Pulitzer day, and the first time this kind of stand-up-in-the-newsroom ceremony was being observed in the new Renzo Piano-designed tower the newspaper moved into last May.  read more »

The New York Times under executive editor Bill Keller still has fewer Pulitzer victories to its credit than during the short-lived reign of his predecessor, Howell Raines.

Under Raines, who served approximately 21 months before resigning in 2003 in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, the paper's news pages published seven Pulitzer-winning entries.

In more than twice that span of time—53 Pulitzer-eligible months as executive editor—Keller has published six Pulitzer winners.  read more »

Yesterday, the Pulitzer Prize administrator, Sig Gissler, told a group of reporters, "The old cliché is that when you win a Pulitzer, the first line of your obituary has been written." Yes, but what if you win three?  read more »

Barry Bearak is still in jail. Top officials in Zimbabwe agreed the case against him was groundless, but according to Bill Keller, the state's lawyers overruled them and he'll remain in prison for a second night.

Here is Bill Keller's statement, sent to us through a Times spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis:  read more »

Dith Pran, the New York Times photographer whose disappearance and escape from the clutches of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was famously chronicled in the movie The Killing Fields, died today in New Jersey. He was 65.  read more »

For some weeks now, New York Times editors have been pinch-hitting in the role of weekend editor, ever since the paper announced Marty Gottlieb was moving on in a role to help work out the paper's relationship with the IHT.

Now they've got their full-time replacement: Alison Mitchell. She's been promoted to associate managing editor. (We've sent out an e-mail to a spokeswoman to find out if that means she'll be on the masthead. We'll update you when we find out.)

For now, here's the memo:  read more »

Bill Keller sent out a 384-word memo this morning announcing that William Grimes will become the new obit writer for the paper.

Here's the memo:

To the Staff:

There are some bylines that are, by general acclamation, must reads. William Grimes is one. No matter the subject, no matter the headline, Biff’s name atop a column of type is enough to encourage a reader to take the plunge. It’s a byline that carries a signature, a blend (or call it a cocktail — Biff wrote a book about drinks) of gentle wit, graceful style
and wide-ranging erudition.  read more »

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Meanwhile, more job cut news, this time back on Eighth Avenue!

Bill Keller sent out a memo this afternoon digging through some bad news. He said that Times staffers have until March 5 to voluntarily accept a buyout so that they can ease their way into retirement (which is ex