'New York Times' Promotes Two To Masthead

By: E&P Staff New York The masthead of The New York Times got a little more crowded Tuesday as executive editor Bill Keller named Michele McNally and William E. Schmidt assistant managing editors.

McNally, the newspaper's director of photography, is the first photo editor to ever reach the AME position on the masthead. Schmidt, a former national and foreign correspondent, is the Times' managing editor for resources and planning.

In a staff memo, Keller said McNally's promotion "is both a recognition of her own strong leadership and an overdue acknowledgment of the status photojournalism has earned at this paper. The admiration our matchless team of photographers and picture editors has won for The Times, both from their professional peers and from discerning readers in general, should by now have erased any lingering notion that pictures are secondary -- that they exist in service to the words, or in service to the design."

Keller praised Schmidt for being a "genius at the kind of work that, in a newsroom, you tend not to notice when it's done well." Schmidt has overseen administration of the paper's 1,200 employees--from hiring to retirement--as well as its budget. "Especially in the past two years, when the newspaper business has been in a slump, Bill has dedicated himself to extracting the maximum journalistic bang for our bucks, to making every manager accountable for spending wisely, and to helping assure that all of our employees get frank, constructive evaluations of their work," Keller wrote in the memo.

McNally became director of photography at the Times in 2004 after 18 years at Fortune magazine. In the past year, the Times's photography and photo editing have won a first place award from World Press Photo, the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Award and its award for feature photography, and numerous other photo editing awards from Best of Photojournalism and Pictures of the Year.

Schmidt was named associate managing editor for resources and planning in 2003 after serving as associate managing editor for personnel and newsroom administration since 1997. He joined the Times in 1981 and spent 10 years working on the national desk before serving as bureau chief in Denver, Atlanta and Chicago. From 1991 until 1995, Schmidt was assigned to New York as deputy national editor, and helped direct the paper's coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing and 1996 Presidential campaign.

In 1987 Schmidt shared a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for articles about the causes of the Challenger disaster. He also shared in a George Polk Award in 1971 for national reporting for coverage of the shootings at Kent State University. In 1977 he won an award from the Overseas Press Club for his reporting on the war in Lebanon.