The New York Times has selected Joseph F. Kahn, a Pulitzer Prize-winning China correspondent who rose to lead the international desk, to be its next executive editor.
One of the most powerful positions in American media and the global news business will be taken on by Mr. Kahn, currently the No. 2 editor at The Times. Dean Baquet's eight-year tenure is expected to conclude in June.
The publisher of The Times made the announcement.
For many people, especially those who have worked alongside Joe, this announcement will come as no surprise.
Mr. Kahn was elevated by Mr. Sulzberger because he was a veteran journalist with traditional newspaper reporting and editing skills. The Times is focused on a digital future and competing for audiences around the world after decades devoted to the daily miracle of the print edition.
Mr. Kahn spearheaded the re-engineering of the paper's newsroom for the speed and agility of modern media. The copy desk was dismantled, the use of real-time news updates was expanded and the emphasis was on visual journalism. He has led the paper's international expansion, building out hubs in Europe and Asia.
The newsroom he joined 24 years ago is vastly different. The Times' journalism is spread across a number of apps and websites. Reporters work with programmers, data analysts and audience development specialists.
The Times is grappling with changing views about the role of independent journalism in a society that is divided by political ideology and cultural identity. Mr. Kahn said securing the public's trust was one of his top priorities.
Mr. Kahn said in an interview that they don't know where the political zeitgeist will move over time.
He succeeds Mr. Baquet, whose tenure yielded 18 Pulitzer Prizes for The Times.
When executive editors at The Times step down, Mr. Baquet will be 65 years old, and he declined to comment on his plans. Mr. Baquet will remain at The Times to lead an exciting new venture, according to the memo.
The first Black executive editor of The Times, Mr. Baquet, urged his journalists to pursue investigations that could yield the highest possible impact. He helped steer expos of Mr. Trump's decades-long tax avoidance and the sexual misconduct of the Fox News star Bill O'Reilly and the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
During Mr. Baquet's tenure, the paper's readership grew to 10 million digital subscribers, from 966,000, as Mr. Sulzberger sought to reduce the paper's reliance on a collapsing advertising market.
Mr. Baquet was involved in controversies inside and outside the paper.
The paper found the award-winning podcast to be well short of journalistic standards. Donald G. McNeil Jr., a reporter for the Times, left under pressure after being accused of using a racist slur. Newsroom employees wanted a more aggressive commitment to diversity. Some liberals criticized the newspaper for its coverage.
Mr. Kahn is one of Mr. Baquet's closest friends. Mr. Baquet is known for being outgoing and casual, while Mr. Kahn is more reserved. Some of the employees who have never worked in the office because of the Pandemic will be part of his challenge.
Mr. Kahn is the son of a retailing pioneer who started supermarket chains in the Northeast and founded the chain of office-supply superstores. After earning a journalism degree from Columbia University, he worked as a reporter for a short time and often criticized newspaper coverage with his son.
After graduating from Harvard with a degree in history, Joseph Kahn edited his high school paper and served as president of the school's daily newspaper. He was a reporter for The Dallas Morning News. A professor's observation that China could be the great story of the next decade inspired Mr. Kahn to enroll in a master's program in East Asian studies at Harvard.
He was writing for The Morning News. After covering the Tiananmen Square protests, he persuaded his editors in Dallas to keep him in China as a correspondent. The Chinese authorities ordered him to leave the country after detaining him at one point. He shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for international reporting.
Mr. Kahn was assigned to Shanghai by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Kahn was editor and publisher of The Far Eastern Economic Review, which was owned by The Journal's parent company.
He was the Beijing bureau chief in 2003 after covering Wall Street and economics. He shared a Pulitzer in 2006 with the Times correspondent Jim Yardley for an investigation into China's flawed legal system.
Mr. Kahn was appointed international editor in 2011. He oversaw a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation in 2012 into the hidden wealth of China's ruling elite, prompting the Chinese authorities to block access to The Times website and expel some of its journalists.
Mr. Baquet described his charge as "to lead our efforts to build The Times of the future, and to grapple with questions of what we cover going forward."
At an internal Times gathering, Mr. Kahn laid out some priorities.
He said editorial independence was maintained in an age of division. He wants to build a work force that represents diversity of thought, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background. He said The Times should be a direct competitor to dozens of news outlets, ranging from global television networks like CNN and the BBC to niche upstarts like The Marshall Project and The Information.
The Times's journalistic and financial moves are scrutinized by the news industry and beyond, and Mr. Kahn's early decisions as executive editor will be no exception. Mr. Sulzberger said in his memo that he was comfortableentrusting the future of his family's newspaper to Mr. Kahn.
The publisher wrote that this remains a period of constant change and that Joe is the perfect editor to build on this hard-won momentum and lead.
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