The New York Times has named Joseph Kahn as its new executive editor, the paper’s top editorial job.
Kahn will replace Dean Baquet, the New York Times’s first Black executive editor, who has led the paper since 2014 but who hit the company’s mandatory retirement age, 65, this year.
“Joe brings impeccable news judgment, a sophisticated understanding of the forces shaping the world and a long track record of helping journalists produce their most ambitious and courageous work,” said the Times’s publisher, AG Sulzberger.
Kahn’s promotion was reported to be widely expected. After joining the paper in 1998, and having worked as a China correspondent, Kahn led the international news desk before being tapped as managing editor, the second-highest ranking position.
Kahn, 57, has also worked at the Wall Street Journal and Dallas Morning News, where he shared in a Pulitzer prize for reporting on violence against women.
Baquet has dealt with a number of challenges. In late 2020, the New York Times podcast Caliphate was roundly criticized after an internal review found that an important source was probably fabricating his experiences.
The paper also faced criticism for a lack of diversity, facing a 2016 lawsuit in which two employees alleged a workplace environment “rife with discrimination based on age, race, and gender”.
In a diversity report conducted in 2021, people of color said they faced “unsettling and sometimes painful day-to-day workplace experiences”.
Baquet will take a new position that will be announced soon, the New York Times said. His term as executive editor is expected to conclude in June.
“It has been my great honor to lead the best newsroom in the world for the past eight years,” Baquet said in a statement.
“I would like to thank the Sulzberger family for their continued dedication to protecting our country’s most powerful engine of independent, investigative journalism.”
