New York Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson and publisher Arthur Sulzberger tell employees that the “significant redesign” of the company announced today — there are three new groups — is “intended to accelerate the delivery of our top priorities: growth, particularly in our paid products business; better teamwork across the Company; and a special focus on excellence in plotting the future of our print operations.”

It is our hope that this reshaping of our organization will result in faster decision making, clearer lines of responsibility and greater accountability.

Read the Bloomberg story and the Times memo.

March 15, 2013

On the Record From Arthur and Mark: A New Structure

At our town halls last month we promised that within a few weeks Mark would unveil a new organizational structure for the Company to help us achieve our strategic goals. Today we are announcing it.

It’s a significant redesign of The New York Times Company, one intended to accelerate the delivery of our top priorities: growth, particularly in our paid products business; better teamwork across the Company; and a special focus on excellence in plotting the future of our print operations.

The new structure introduces product-centric general managers charged with leading our key growth initiatives in a new Digital Products and Services Group. It also means a new focus on advertising in a free-standing Advertising Department and a new Print Products and Services Group. Across the Company, we believe that the structure will encourage swifter decision making and clearer priorities with smaller teams empowered to achieve their goals as quickly and effectively as possible./CONTINUES Read More

When 50,000 people read your newspaper every day, someone, somewhere is going to find something to criticize. If a news organization reacts to every critic, eventually it loses sight of its job, which is telling the truth.

– Jim Sachetti, editor of the Bloomsburg, Pa. Press Enterprise

A Romenesko reader who works at the Press Enterprise in Bloomsburg, Pa. sent a link to a TV report about her paper using “nigger” in a story about a school board member’s resignation. (The paper reported that the phrase “It’s Black … Like a Nigger” was listed on the man’s Facebook wall as one of his “favorite quotations.”)

A WBRE-TV reporter tried to get people on the street to say that the Press Enterprise “crossed the line” when it used word. (“Does it startle you that they printed that word at all?” the reporter asked one person. “Would you expect to see something like in a newspaper?”)

Michael Lester

He wasn’t successful though. One black girl told him, “I mean, if he [the school board member] used it, what’s the problem? They’re not saying it.” An older white woman said: “They’re just quoting what the man said, so that’s not a fault of the newspaper.”

Michael Lester, who wrote the story, tells Romenesko readers he hasn’t heard much about the story. “My take is that our readers are smart enough to know we don’t condone use of the word.” (I couldn’t get a comment from editor Jim Sachetti because he’s out sick today. His quote on top of this post is what he told WBRE-TV.)

Lester says there wasn’t any newsroom debate over printing the word because “the word was the story.”

He watched the TV reporter fish for criticism of his story and “just laughed out loud. …I got a kick out of it.”

The story is behind a pay wall, so Lester emailed it to me for posting here.

* Watch the WBRE report about the Press Enterprise publishing the n-word

Read Lester’s story after the jump. Read More

Peter Lauria is leaving Thomson Reuters to become editor of BuzzFeed’s new business section.

“The opportunity to build a team and vertical around business news is a challenge I’ve wanted to take on for a while,” he says in a release. “The ability to do it at a place that is growing and whose sensibilities so align with mine makes me energized and anxious to get started.”

BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith says: “There is increasingly this big, social conversation around business content that people are sharing and reading, and we want to be in it.”

He wants Lauria to “bring some of the DNA of a great tabloid business section” to BuzzFeed.

“We’re not going to do everything, but we’re going to focus in and do a few things very, very well: obviously, media, entertainment, tech and Wall Street.”

* BuzzFeed to launch business section (marketwatch.com)

BuzzFeed’s release about Lauria’s hiring is after the jump. Read More

* Voice of Orange County has more on Kushner’s “no afflicting” remarks (voiceofoc.org)
* Earlier: Kushner says he doesn’t believe in “afflicting the comfortable” (jimromenesko.com)

“I will do anything short of pornography at this point to hang around sets and have fun,” Lawrence O’Donnell tells Daniel D’Addario. “Sets are really fun workplaces and everyone there is creative and energetic. …There’s a great spirit to a film set that is unique in American workplaces by far. And it is the most fun I’ve had in my professional life.”

Any advice for MSNBC’s Chris Hayes?

I don’t really — I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no advice for how to do this stuff. …

I still don’t get this kind of television. I don’t. And it’s not a business that I feel I have a working understanding of, unlike prime-time commercial entertainment television or HBO and Showtime. I understand completely what they do, and I want to do what they do. But on a news show? I have no advice for anyone.

* O’Donnell: “Every show we do offends my artistic sensibilities” (salon.com)

* Former Boston Phoenix staffer Charlie Pierce recalls his time at the paper. “I wrote 6,000 words about lobsters and 5,000 words about raccoons. …I honed my chops. I became a generalist. I learned everything I know about being a journalist, and almost everything I know about being me in the world.” (grantland.com)
* Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton: “Dear Boston Globe: The story on the Phoenix closing deserved stronger placement on the front page and you know it.” (It’s on the bottom right.) (@jbenton)
* More from Benton: Phoenix’s closing shows that glossing up print doesn’t work miracles. (niemanlab.org)

* Winners of the Scripps Howard Awards are announced. WSJ wins for its “Watched” series. (sacbee.com)
* Billionaire Eli Broad teams with financier Austin Beutner to bid for the Los Angeles Times. (hollywoodreporter.com)
* Bill Keller: Clark Hoyt drew me back into the fanclub of public editors with his approach to the job. (forbes.com)
* Does the New York Times really need two CFOs? (bloomberg.com)
* Los Angeles Times: Reuters deputy social-media editor Matthew Keys is indicted on charges connected to a hack of this newspaper’s website in 2010. (latimes.com)
* Keys tweets: “I am fine. I found out the same way most of you did: From Twitter.” (@thematthewkeys)
* Veteran sportswriter Dan Jenkins, 83, wins the 2013 Red Smith Award. (apsportseditors.org)
* Joshua Foust on why he stopped writing for free. (joshuafoust.com)
* Tunku Varadarajan is leaving Newsweek. (capitalnewyork.com)
* “Bombshell” about student president candidate results in record traffic for Georgetown University newspaper. (washingtonpost.com)
* NBC execs and Matt Lauer address the “Today” show’s woes in a lighthearted fashion. (nytimes.com)
* When Pope Francis spoke for the first time, Fox News won in Total Viewers while CNN led in the key demo. (mediabistro.com)
* Bloomberg-BNA union members overwhelmingly ratify contract. (newsguild.org)
* Outgoing executive editor at The Daily Caller once posed as a “dope-smoking commie.” (motherjones.com)
* Justin Bieber has had it with “the countless lies” about him in the media. (reuters)

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