NYT Memo: Jim Schachter to Become Mag-Development Editor, Acquire Part of Marzorati's Brain
And the process of turning Gerry Marzorati from Times Mag editor into something else continues apace. This memo just in from Bill Keller:
To the Staff:
As the Times Magazine has grown in a few years to encompass first the T magazines, then Play magazine and now (or soon to be) a real-estate magazine, we've been dizzily working, infrastructure-wise, to keep up.
Space has been found. Systems have been put in place. Editors have been hired. What we haven't done is find just the right person to manage the new enterprise of expanding our magazine platform, and to assure that these ventures continue to meet the same high journalistic standards readers associate with The New York Times. This means a first-class editor who can work to gently integrate these magazines into the Times, editorially and managerially; help them deal with their growing pains in budget and production matters; guide them into their Web iterations; find time to conceive of new magazine products; and, for that matter, oversee wh at we can't yet foresee.
Beginning in late April, these challenges will be the responsibility of Jim Schachter, who will become deputy editor for magazine development. He will report to Gerry Marzorati. "He will be my eyes and ears, and, with regard to these magazines, a fair portion of my brain," Gerry says.
Since he was recruited away from the Los Angeles Times, Jim has been both a creative force and a source of sanity in two major departments. He combines an instinct for great, original journalistic ideas with the managerial gifts to assemble all the right people and make those original ideas happen. As a deputy in Bizday, he could take difficult and potentially dry subjects and render them inviting. As a deputy in Culture, he has helped supply a hard journalistic spine to the potentially ethereal world of the arts. Any project that has Jim involved is guaranteed to be rigorous, invigorating and fun. Lucky folks at the magazine.
Jim's new assignment begins as soon as Sam Sifton finds and inducts a successor.
Bill
