Spayd Selected as NY Times Public Editor

Elizabeth Spayd, editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, has been named the newest public editor of The New York Times.

The Times today confirmed the appointment.

Spayd has held the editor/publisher title at Columbia's flagship journalism publication since early 2014. She was previously managing editor of The Washington Post. She first joined that publication in 2006 as website managing editor.

Spayd becomes the sixth public editor in the Times’ history. That ombudsman position was established in 2003, in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair scandal, as a means of ensuring the implementation of proper journalism at the paper.

Spayd succeeds former Buffalo News editor Margaret Sullivan, who in December announced that she would leave the paper. Sullivan, who was the first woman to hold the public editor position, was author of the Times’ Public Editor’s Journal blog, which details the paper’s inner workings. Sullivan had famously been critical of the Times’ use of anonymous sources, and held the public editor job for four years, longer than anyone else.

Sullivan in February was appointed media columnist of the Washington Post. She began that position in April.

Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in a statement referred to Spayd as “an exceptionally accomplished journalist,” and said her “work at C.J.R. along with her long and successful history at The Washington Post have given her a broad range of experiences that will serve us well as she assumes this critical position serving as a reliable and engaged representative of our readers.”

Spayd will join the paper sometime this summer, according to the publisher.