NY Times names first woman top editor

The executive editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller, will step down this summer after eight years on the job and will be succeeded by managing editor Jill Abramson, who will become the first woman to hold the newspaper's top editing post.

Keller, 62, who presided over the newsroom during a time of enormous change in the industry, will stay on as a writer for The New York Times Magazine and as a columnist for the newspaper's new Sunday opinion section, the Times announced Thursday.

"Bill came to me several weeks ago and told me that he felt the time had come for him to step down from the role of executive editor," Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a statement. "I accepted his decision with mixed emotions."

Abramson, 57, joined the Times in 1997 after working for nearly a decade at The Wall Street Journal. She was the Times' Washington editor and bureau chief before Keller picked her to become the managing editor in 2003.

She said in a statement that she was grateful for the opportunity to lead the paper, calling it "a dream job."

Dean Baquet, now an assistant managing editor and Washington bureau chief at the paper, will succeed Abramson as managing editor.

The Times said the changes are effective Sept. 6.

Keller, who won a Pulitzer Prize as a Times reporter for his coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union, took over as the top editor in 2003 in the wake of a plagiarism scandal. -- AP