Mark Thompson, outgoing director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation, has been named as the new president and CEO of the New York Times Company. He will also serve on the company’s board.
The
New York Times
reported
that Thompson will join the company in November.
Thompson has spent nearly his entire career at the BBC. “The Times reached outside its own company, its own industry and even its own country to find a leader to guide it in an uncharted digital future,” the
New York Times
article said.
Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. told the
New York Times:
“We have people who understand print very well, the best in the business. We have people who understand advertising well, the best in the business. But our future is on to video, to social, to mobile. It doesn’t mirror what we’ve done. It broadens what we are going to do.”
The
Times
article said Thompson “was regarded as an unorthodox choice not just because he was from television but because he worked for a public broadcaster and had no experience running a publicly traded concern like the Times Company.”
The Daily Beast
noted,
“Though his managerial and political skills will stand him in good stead with the paper’s empire and the Sulzberger family, it won’t necessarily generate new readers willing to fork out money for digital versions of the paper.” (Sources:
New York Times,
Aug. 14, 2012;
Daily Beast,
Aug. 15, 2012.)
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