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Topic: Memos Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 8/4/2005 3:51:16 PM
Title: Meislin named NYT Associate ME/Internet publishing
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From: Jonathan Landman
To: [New York Times newsroom]
Subject: New job for Meislin
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005

Think back. Way back. Before the word "dot-com" etched a new groove inside your cranium. Back to 1993, when TimesPast shows a grand total of three references to the phrase “World Wide Web.” Back to 1994, when Peter Lewis had to explain: "The Web allows companies or individuals to publish electronic documents containing pictures and sound as well as text. When used with special browsing software, it allows viewers to move from document to document at the click of a button, regardless of where on the global network the document resides."

"Geez," most of us probably thought. "What in the world is he talking about?"

Rich Meislin did not think "Geez." By 1994, he had already been living in the online world for nine years. From his throne atop the mysterious kingdom of Information and Technology, where he was senior editor, Rich sent forth a new and wonderful gizmo that few of us had ever imagined, let alone seen. It would appear magically on your computer and let you fetch interesting things, like dictionaries and phone directories and (imagine this) airline flight schedules. He called it the Navigator page, and over the years Rich nursed it and expanded it as a labor of love well beyond his actual job responsibilities. It was a gift that keeps giving to this day (check out his new Blogs 101 page). I think it's fair to say that Rich has taught most of us more about how to use the web than anyone else before or since.

This begins to explain why Rich is the obvious choice to help lead us into the future described by Bill Keller and Martin Nisenholtz in their memo on integrating the web into the newsroom. From a new perch as associate managing editor for internet publishing, Rich will be intimately involved in inventing and cultivating new journalistic forms while at the same time guiding our web presence according to journalistic values that are not new at all. The title reflects both the unique skills and experience Rich brings to the job and the importance it has for every corner of the operation.

One of those corners, the web newsroom as it now exists, will continue to report directly to Len Apcar, who joins Rich and me at the heart of the newsroom integration experiment, along with Bill Brink in continuous news. In three years as editor-in-chief of nytimes.com, Len has quietly and efficiently led a team of dedicated web journalists expanding the ambition of special-to-the-web New York Times material that we need to invent ever more energetically – something Len is well placed to teach us how to do.

For those who don’t know Rich, he came to The Times as a copy boy straight from Harvard in 1975, rose through the clerical and reporting ranks to become bureau chief in Albany, correspondent in Central America and the Caribbean, then bureau chief in Mexico City. He then headed the paper’s first independent graphics desk, greatly expanding the discipline when we weren’t exactly leaders in the art of graphical storytelling. Next, as senior editor for technology, Rich introduced universal Internet access for reporters and editors and led the newsroom into the era of color and pagination. If you think that was easy, please remember that those were the days when pages were assembled by men with knives. Then he went over to the web as editor-in-chief, becoming one of the pioneers in the journey we now embark upon en masse. Most recently, Rich has been technology news editor in bizday and head of our news surveys operation.

It’s a resume that shouts, "Innovation." A pretty important word at this stage in our history.

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