Frank Bruni, whose writing career at The New York Times has spanned two presidential campaigns, part of a papacy and more than five years as chief restaurant critic, has been named an Op-Ed columnist.
Andrew Rosenthal, editor of the opinion pages, said in an e-mail to the staff on Monday that Mr. Bruni would write a new column in The Times’s redesigned Sunday Op-Ed pages.
“This column, which will be a new anchor feature of the section, will be a sharp, opinionated look at a big event of the last week, from a different or unexpected angle, or a small event that was really important but everyone seems to have missed, or something entirely different,” Mr. Rosenthal said. “It will fast become a destination for our readers with Frank at the keyboard.”
He said Mr. Bruni would also write a column one other day of the week, most likely Thursday.
Mr. Bruni, 46, is the first openly gay Op-Ed columnist in The Times’s 160-year history.
He said he would take on a wide variety of subjects.
“I’m excited and really grateful. At The Times and beforehand, I’ve been lucky to be able to write about many different topics, and I’m eager to take on a job that will allow me to range across most or all of them in a reflective, analytical and sometimes — I hope — spirited way.”
His new job— he was a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine — is a piece of the broader reshuffling of the Sunday Week in Review. The section, which will be renamed and run by the editorial department rather than the newsroom, will focus on opinion pieces.
Mr. Bruni joined The Times from The Detroit Free Press in 1995. While in Detroit, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for his portrait of a convicted child molester. He is the author of two New York Times best sellers, “Ambling into History,” an account of George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign, and “Born Round,” a memoir about his struggles with weight. He spent three and a half years in The Times’s Washington bureau, covering Congress and the White House and writing for the magazine. He was named Rome bureau chief in 2002, a job he held until 2004, when he was named chief restaurant critic.
Mr. Rosenthal’s full memo is below.
To all:
I am very excited to announced today that Frank Bruni has agreed to join the ranks of Times Op-Ed columnists. Frank will be, first off, writing the Page 2 column in the remake of the Week in Review.
This column, which will be a new anchor feature of the section, will be a sharp, opinionated look at a big event of the last week, from a different or unexpected angle, or a small event that was really important but everyone seems to have missed, or something entirely different. It will fast become a destination for our readers with Frank at the keyboard.
Frank also will be writing a regular Op-Ed column in our print pages and online, most likely on Thursdays. He is a net addition to our lineup, not a replacement for anyone or anything.
Frank needs no introduction. His work as a political writer, a foreign correspondent, food critic and magazine writer for the Times have been popular with our readers for almost 16 years.
His first column will appear in the first edition of the new section, unless, of course, he decides to write sooner.
Andy Rosenthal
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2b2531c1da48e964a4de49255b7da8a9
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