PBS NewsHour video: New York Times Names First Woman to Executive Editor Job. Jill Abramson speaks to NewHour host Jim Lehrer about her new position starting in September. June 3, 2011.
(What you hear above from Jill Abramson at the very beginning of the interview will be critical later, so pay attention!)
Trailer -Page One: Inside The New York Times, 2011 HD
Page One: Inside the New York Times hits theaters June 24th, 2011
More thoughts of my own are below Sharon's last two posts that connect-the-dots on the Abramson story that lots of people I know will be watching VERY closely -like me.
For the record, I've been reading the NY Times daily continuously for over thirty-five years, starting when I was at JFK Junior High in North Miami Beach, circa 1974 and continuing when I got next door at NMBHS.
Every morning as I walked to school from our family's home on N.E. 159th Street & 14th Avenue in NMB, I picked up a copy of the paper next to the then-Wolfie's Restaurant on the south side of the 163rd Street Shopping Center, often getting a Black & White cookie, before walking thru the shopping center, back before it had the fabric roof installed, as the two schools were just north of it.
(The sugar from those cookies came in handy at NMB since I was on the early shift and had Spanish with Mrs. Adderly at 7 a.m.!)
No matter where I've ever lived in the United States, when I wasn't subscribing to it, I've always known every single nearby location where a NYT could be purchased, whether at a news stand or a vending machine. And I do mean EVERY one, too.
My stack of NY Times Sunday Magazines while in high school at North Miami Beach came in handy more times than I could tell you here, and I can still remember certain key stories or fashion essays, which is how I knew who Carrie Donovan and William Safire were long before I got up to Bloomington and IU.
There and then later in Evanston and Arlington County, my stash in banker's boxes was, if not symbols of upper-ward mobility or conspicuous consumption, at least signs of organized affinity hoarding.
The information cache in Arlington, 99% of it anyway, eventually wound-up in the hands of the Friends of the Arlington County Library to sell when I had to return to South Florida in late 2003.
My treasure trove of magazines and journals were referred to by some friends, "The National Archives Annex." Usually good-naturedly, though NOT always.
Something they didn't have on the cover of the Times magazine when I was in Junior High in the 1970's -this kind of amazing photography and color composition.
Above, The Self-Manufacture of Megan Fox by Lynn Hirshberg, How America's leading starlet made herself up for the multimedia age, NYT 2009-11-11, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for The New York Times
There's your the NYT-flavored mini-bio of me to better appreciate the following.
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The Wrap
WaxWord blog
Jill Abramson First Woman Editor of New York Times
By Sharon Waxman
Published: June 02, 2011 @ 9:03 am
Jill Abramson has been named the executive editor of The New York Times, the newspaper’s publisher Arthur Sulzberger announced on Thursday.Abramson has been a managing editor since 2003. She is the first woman to lead the paper in its 160-year history.
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The Wrap
WaxWord blog
Jill Abramson’s Twitter Account, and a Vision for the New York Times
By Sharon Waxman
published June 3, 2011, 6:29 am
It would be more interesting that Jill Abramson was named executive editor of The New York Times if the paper was not on such a knife’s edge for survival.Much respected, Abramson can only be considered dynamic when compared to her predecessor, the bloodless Bill Keller. Keller is so laconic that his own wife has commonly disparaged him as a cocktail party killer.
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Before reading my comments, see this intriguing insight into Abramson that was in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web column by James Tarnato, a column I've been reading -and occasionally contributing items to- since I was living in Arlington County.
Specifically, read the opening piece titled, All the News That's Fit to Scrub "Absolute truth"? At the New York Times, it's more like Minitrue which includes some great pithy observational comments from Taranto and blogger Ann Althouse, and a nice tweaking of
Hendrik Hertzberg called, simply enough, How to Horrify Hendrik Hertzberg
None of what is there surprises me.
Now you know why I said to pay attention to the video at the top, no?
In my opinion, Sharon Waxman's Friday column was MUCH more incisive than anyone else's analysis I've read -and I've read a lot- on not just the well-known and generally understood problems at the Times and it's odd mixture of both high-minded sense of duty and the more immediate need to make (and keep) a buck in the digital age, but also on Abramson's laconic personality and whether that will prove helpful or hurtful to making some necessary changes there, laconic NOT being a synonym for inspiring or motivating.
And, of course, her well-deserved tweaking -but not Tweets- of Bill Keller's well-known social media myopia, even though Times readers are MUCH more likely than other newspaper subscribers to not only have a Twitter account, but actually have something worth saying and reading!
It seems counter-intuitive that someone like Keller, at the nexus of so much useful information and insight, someone who always says the right measured thing on his appearances on The Charlie Rose Show, should be the one who actually thinks they're going to tell/lecture society -and his own readers- that they're engaged in folly.
(In that respect, Keller's myopia is akin to the Miami Herald's/McClatchy's current management keeping their head firmly in the sand when there's a million compelling stories down here in South Florida that they are consciously ignoring, but which a real energetic and properly-motivated newspaper would be doing amazing things with, a point that I've made here many times in the past with specific examples of stories they slept on.They even bury their own reader blogs that they launched and triumphantly hailed but two short years ago -of which mine was among the originals, to my own surprise, since they never contacted me- but have now ignored them to the point that they "promote" them with nary a graphic or icon on the page but merely the word, South Florida Blogs.At the very bottom of their web page.I even forget they exist -and I'm listed.in the year 2011, despite the fact that many smaller newspapers or niche online publications have them -and have had them for years- the Herald still doesn't even have a simple widget that websites or blogs can post to run their stories about sports or South Florida news or... to send readers their way.In many respects, to me, the current Herald is like a mediocre college newspaper circa 1992 -their whole world is about to change drastically, but instead of having faculty advisors who are prescient, they have ones who think this Internet thing will have little relevancy for them, so they keep ordering nothing but more barrels of ink.)
Is there a business model for quality journalism?
I last wrote a lot about the Times here on the blog in April, when I just wanted to unburden myself of some tidbits and random thoughts from my time spending lots of time in and near their Washington bureau, though there was a LOT that I intentionally left out.That post was Memories of D.C. bureau of N.Y. Times; Cool stuff from NYT Graphics: Key states for Obama in 2012; 2010 Census interactive map
Eye Street trivia -I shared this with Rick Berke himself many years ago -Separated at Birth: NYT's Rick Berke and ESPN's baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian.
Another take on the whole Bill Keller conundrum is at Forbes' online media blog
Forbes Magazine
Media blog
NY Times Editor Bill Keller: The Exit Interview
By Jeff Bercovici
June 2 2011 - 8:00 pm
Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, caught media watchers off guard today when he announced that he’ll step down in September, with managing editor Jill Abramson replacing him. After eight years of leading a 1,200 person newsroom through wars, recessions, elections and political sex scandals, he’s returning to being a full-time writer. I caught up with Keller, who told me what made him decide to walk away now, what he finds “damned annoying” about Arianna Huffington, and why he’s hoping the next three months will be filled with worldwide chaos.
Read the rest of the post at:
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WaxWord blog, Sharon Waxman's take on life on the left coast, high culture, low culture and the business of entertainment and media is at:
YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/thewrapnews
Alan D. Mutter's blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur
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A March 21st post of Alan's titled, A shock video to keep news execs up at night
highlighted this video below, and I agree; check it out and think about how different the Miami Herald would be today if someone like this was in charge:
The Newspaper Association of America's session from their mediaXchange 2011, in Dallas, TX,
Newspapers—A Path Forward |
 Speakers Ken Doctor, Affiliate Analyst, Outsell Clark Gilbert, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deseret News Publishing John Paton, Chief Executive Officer, Journal Register Company |
