Jill Abramson, the New York Times Washington bureau chief who frequently clashed with Howell Raines, emerged as a rising star of the post-Raines era yesterday when she was named managing editor.
Abramson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is the first woman to hold such a lofty post at the Times, and her appointment touched off a wave of speculation about who will succeed her in running the Washington bureau.
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Executive Editor Bill Keller has tapped a second managing editor for the first time in the paper's history. While Abramson, 49, will oversee the news side, John Geddes, 51, now deputy managing editor, will be promoted to managing editor for operations, effective Sept. 2.
Keller said in an interview that Abramson "sets the bar really high. She's got a lot of guts. I know for a certainty she'll tell me when I'm doing something stupid. I also know she won't tell you when I'm doing something stupid."
While they have never worked in the same city, Abramson is "a superb journalist" who has "got a reporter's DNA," Keller said. "I like the fact that her background is in investigative reporting, which brings a kind of tough-mindedness and patience that is really useful for editors. She gets great stuff out of people."
Asked about her first-woman status, Keller said: "If you took gender out of the equation and asked 50 people, she'd get the job by acclamation. Does it probably boost the spirits of women who work at the paper? I think so."
Keller offered the job Monday night over drinks at McHale's, a low-rent burger joint near the paper. He said there was "a substantial element of selfishness" in his selection of Abramson and the outgoing Geddes because "I like to work with people who are fun."
Alan Murray, who tapped Abramson as his deputy when he ran the Journal's Washington bureau, had sent Keller a note promoting her for the job.
"She has this wonderful ability to walk up to the guy she's working for and tell him when he's screwing up," said Murray, now CNBC's Washington bureau chief. "She is not a yes woman. She's firm, she's frank and some people may find that off-putting, but nobody misses her point."
Rick Berke, the Times's deputy Washington bureau chief, said Abramson will be "terrific" because "she's one of those amazing people who has a photographic memory and knows every story written about a given subject for the last 10 years, whether it was in the New York Post or National Geographic.
"Even in the midst of great crises at the paper and in the world," he added, "Jill has kept her sense of humor and not let hard times get her down."
Berke, who served for years as the paper's chief political correspondent, is considered a strong candidate to succeed Abramson, and some Washington reporters have praised his performance in conversations with Keller. The new editor could, however, decide to export someone from New York. Raines was widely seen as planning to give the job to correspondent Patrick Tyler, but Abramson resisted his efforts to move her to Manhattan and Tyler is no longer considered a candidate.
Abramson's battles with Raines, who was ousted as executive editor in June in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, are the stuff of legend. According to a New Yorker article last year, Abramson told then-managing editor Gerald Boyd that she felt "disrespected" and would quit if things didn't change. The next day, Raines apologized. At a subsequent speakerphone conference with New York, Abramson asked to speak first, and when another editor interrupted her she declared: "I'm not finished." When she did finish, there was applause.
Abramson was a member of the newsroom task force that recommended numerous changes Wednesday designed to create a friendlier newsroom, as well as the hiring of a public editor, or ombudsman.
Keller said the shift goes beyond bureaucratic changes: "If you talk about it too much it starts to sound ethereal or touchy-feely, but it has to do with civility and respect. That you only change by example and what kind of behavior you choose to reward over time."
He said he is "pretty comfortable" with the concept of an in-house critic, and that the public editor's job will be reviewed after one year because "we didn't want to be locked in forever if it turned out we designed it wrong."
Keller said he needs Geddes as a second managing editor to help supervise not just the Times but its television division, Web site and the International Herald Tribune, previously co-owned with The Washington Post. "We're a national newspaper aspiring to be something global," he said.
A spokesman said Abramson and Geddes were not giving interviews.
Abramson, a Harvard graduate, served as editor in chief of Legal Times, a Washington newspaper, from 1986 to 1988. She spent the next decade at the Journal, where she specialized in investigative reporting, particularly about money and politics, before ascending to deputy bureau chief. She joined the Times in 1997 and took over the Washington bureau three years ago.
Geddes is also a Wall Street Journal veteran, having spent 13 years in jobs ranging from Bonn bureau chief to national news editor. Before joining the Times as a business editor in 1994, he was chief executive of BIS Strategic Decisions, a market research company.
