Harvard Crimson | Yale Daily News
Today is Jill Abramson’s first day as New York Times executive editor. Named as Bill Keller’s successor in June, Abramson “must make hard decisions about how to position [the Times] to ensure its survival, a challenge that has many worrying about the future of journalism,” says the Harvard Crimson. Steve Brill assures the paper that the 1976 Harvard-Radcliffe grad “is singularly equipped among the leading editors in the country to take the New York Times from the preeminent organization that chops down trees and delivers the news to your doorstep, to the leader that delivers the best news in whatever way you want it.” The Crimson reports:
Abramson’s time at Harvard passed in the fashion typical of most students. She tried her hand on stage to mediocre reviews, wrote her History and Literature thesis on the unemployed in Britain during the Great Depression, and edited the Radcliffe Union of Students newsletter. She also met her future husband, Henry Little Griggs III ’76, at the College.
Abramson has taught a spring semester English class at Yale since 2007, but she told the Yale Daily News last week that “I decided that agreeing to teach my class, which I’ve loved, would be too much of a time commitment in my first year in a new, even more demanding job.”
> Adweek: Everything you ever wanted to know about Jill Abramson
> What Abramson’s appointment could mean for women in journalism
