Jill Abramson, a managing editor, will replace current Executive Editor Bill Keller. The move is effective September 6th.
NEW YORK -- The executive editor of The New York Times is stepping down after eight years on the job.
The Times announced Thursday that Bill Keller is leaving the post to return to writing. He will be replaced by Jill Abramson, formerly one of his top deputies. She will become the first woman to hold that job at the paper.
Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. says in a statement that Keller asked for the change a few weeks ago. Keller plans to write for The New York Times Magazine and the paper's Sunday opinion and news section.
Abramson was the paper's managing editor.
The newspaper said the changes are effective Sept. 6.
From Jill Abramson's Wikipedia page:
A native of New York City, Abramson received her high school diploma from Ethical Culture Fieldston School and a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard University in 1976.[2] While a student at Harvard, she worked at Time magazine from 1973 to 1976 and subsequently spent nearly a decade as a senior staff reporter for The American Lawyer. In 1986, she was appointed as editor in chief of Legal Times in Washington, D.C., serving for two years. From 1988 to 1997, she was a senior reporter in the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal, eventually rising to deputy bureau chief. She became the chief of The New York Times Washington bureau upon her move to the newspaper in 1997.
Abramson was The Times' Washington Bureau chief during the turbulent period of spring, 2003 during the run-up to the war in Iraq and the Jayson Blair scandal, which led to the resignation of Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd. Abramson was named to the news Managing Editor position (with co-Managing Editor John M.Geddes) by Raines' successor Bill Keller.[3]
In 1995, Abramson and her Wall Street Journal colleague (and Fieldston alumna) Jane Mayer co-authored Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, which detailed circumstances surrounding the confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas. Maureen Dowd would later write of having bonded with Abramson during that time.[4] From 2000–01, she was a professor at Princeton University.[2] She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.[5]
On February 13, 2007, Abramson testified in the perjury trial of Scooter Libby, United States v. Libby. She was called as a defense witness to undercut the credibility of Judith Miller.