Catherine Mathis, the New York Times Co's chief PR person, is leaving the company. Her next job is bound to be easier. The full staff memo and a slight appreciation, below.

Mathis has been with the company for more than a decade, and took on the head PR job just in time to see the flagship Paper of Record slide into unprecedented financial distress. Her job is not easy! She is smart to leave, all things considered!

Mathis handled the pressures of her job by being one of the most on-message, relentlessly focused PR people in all the media. She consistently took the time to answer even the paper's harshest critics. At the same time, she often said Absolutely. Nothing. At all. Of value. Which of course is part of her job description! Still, we have a strange affinity for her and her colleagues, fighting the good fight with robotic intensity to help save a very flawed—and very good—paper. Plus at my last job she once invited me to lunch and showed me around the NYT building. It's fancy. Maybe too fancy. Staff memo:

Dear Colleagues,

With truly mixed emotions, I am writing to inform you that Catherine Mathis, senior vice president, corporate communications, has decided to take a new position as the senior vice president and head of Marketing & Communications for Standards & Poor's, a McGraw-Hill Company, and will be leaving at the end of August.

Catherine has been with the Company for twelve years and has served as the chief communications strategist and spokesperson through some of the most challenging chapters in our history. She has been a source of strength to me, our leadership team and her colleagues throughout the organization. She was always on duty, actively involved in managing the reputation of The Times brand, a major accomplishment, given the massive amount of coverage The Times Company generates on a daily basis.

For all that and much more, everyone at The New York Times Company is grateful to Catherine for her innumerable contributions and wishes her the best of luck.

Ethan Riegelhaupt, the Company's vice president for speechwriting and internal communications, will be taking over our corporate communications department on an interim basis, pending future personnel and administrative decisions.

Sincerely,

Janet