Times Names New Editors for Politics and Metro Desk

The New York Times on Wednesday named Carolyn Ryan, its metropolitan editor, the paper’s top political editor.

Ms. Ryan will be succeeded as metro editor by one of her deputies, Wendell Jamieson.

In a memo to the newsroom, Jill Abramson, the executive editor, and Dean Baquet, the managing editor, cited Ms. Ryan’s “perfect political pitch” and her passion for the great political story as reasons for her appointment.

Ms. Ryan, 48, joined The Times in 2007 from The Boston Globe, where she previously worked as deputy managing editor for local news. Ms. Ryan was the metro desk’s political editor in 2008 when the paper broke the news that Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York was a client of a high-end prostitution ring. The coverage won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for breaking news reporting.

She became the metro editor in January 2011. During her tenure, she shepherded her team of reporters through coverage of Hurricanes Irene and Sandy and the Newtown, Conn., shootings.

In Ms. Ryan’s new role, she will work closely with the paper’s Washington bureau and its political reporters in New York to shape coverage of the New York City mayoral race, the midterm elections and the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, according to a memo released Wednesday afternoon.

She graduated from Bates College in Maine and started her career as a reporter for The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass.

Mr. Jamieson, 46, joined the paper in 2000 after working at The New York Post, The Jersey Journal, New York Newsday and The Daily News. After the attacks on the World Trade Center, he edited The Times’s “Portraits of Grief” coverage, which won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2002. During his tenure at The Times, he worked on metro as an assignment editor, city editor and editor of the City Room blog. He also worked as an editor for the Styles desk.

Ms. Abramson and Mr. Baquet praised his “fascination with and knowledge of every aspect in New York.” He is also the author of the book “Father Knows Less, or ‘Can I Cook My Sister?’ ”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/business/media/times-names-new-editors-for-politics-and-metro-desk.html?partner=rss&emc=rss