New York Times names Bill Keller as executive editor

NEW YORK -- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Keller was named executive editor of The New York Times on Monday, saying he hoped to "quickly put the wounds behind us" from the scandal involving reporter Jayson Blair.

Keller, 54, a former Times managing editor and foreign correspondent, was chosen by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to replace Howell Raines.

Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd resigned under pressure on June 5, five weeks after the discovery that Blair, one of the paper's young stars, had plagiarized material, invented quotes and wrote stories under datelines of places he had never been.

Keller addressed a packed newsroom Monday morning after Sulzberger announced his appointment, which takes effect July 30. A managing editor will be named in the coming weeks, the newspaper said.

Keller told the Times' staff that the time had come to begin looking ahead rather than focusing on the events of the past few months.

"A little introspection is a tonic, but too much of it is poison," Keller said during a speech that was occasionally interrupted by applause.

Keller apparently sought to set himself apart from Raines, who was criticized by staffers for picking favorites and having an autocratic and overbearing management style.

"The great ambition of this paper since its founding has been to report the news without fear or favor," Keller said. "I hope to run a newsroom that is, likewise, without fear or favor."

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Keller said he hoped his appointment marked a new phase for the newspaper, but added: "I won't honestly be able to say that we put everything behind us until I've looked at all the work that various committees are doing.

"I'm assuming we'll be making some changes, the way we do hiring and career development, putting in some additional safeguards to protect our credibility and integrity, and things like that," he said.

Keller was a top candidate for the job the last time around, when Joseph Lelyveld left as executive editor in 2001. Raines was picked instead, and Keller became a Times columnist and senior writer for The New York Times Magazine.

Lelyveld came out of retirement to serve as interim executive editor after the scandal broke.

In a letter to the staff announcing Keller's appointment, Sulzberger said committees looking into the Times' journalism and management would report their findings by the end of the month.

The resignation of Blair, 27, a national correspondent who had been at the paper for four years, set off a firestorm of criticism of top editors' decision to promote him and their failure to catch his mistakes. Many at the paper bitterly criticized the management style of Raines and Boyd.

In a 7,500-word story on May 11, the Times described the episode as "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper."

The Blair fiasco was followed by the May 28 resignation of Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent Rick Bragg. Bragg resigned five days after the newspaper published an editors' note saying that a freelancer who had reported the bulk of one of Bragg's stories should have received credit.

Keller, who once described himself as a "reporter who spent his whole life swearing he'd never be an editor," joined the Times in 1984 as a Washington correspondent. He later worked in Moscow, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. He also headed the Times' bureau in Johannesburg and became foreign editor in 1995. He served as managing editor from 1997 to 2001.

As a columnist, Keller often devoted his columns to foreign policy. While the Times was often perceived as opposing the action in Iraq, Keller backed it.

His columns also ranged from pieces on the city smoking ban to his personal story of losing a child before it was born.

Before joining the Times, Keller was a reporter for The Dallas Times Herald, the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report in Washington, and The (Portland) Oregonian.

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