(2011-12-19) Nytimes Ceo Robinson Fired

Dec'2011: Ny Times CEO Janet Robinson was fired. This hypothesis -- which is our favored theory -- avoids digging up Robinson's last performance report or what-if-ing over internal company politics. You'd be hard pressed to find a media pundit who wouldn't agree that the Grey Lady needs a kick in the pants from someone who understands technology -- and most importantly how to sell digital publishing to advertisers. For pure technologist, there's someone like Paul Berry, the whiz kid who built the Huffington Post. (We hear he's unhappy at AOL, by the way.) Or perhaps a Silicon Valley type could fly over and turn the company into the digital-first powerhouse that newly anointed executive editor Jill Abramson wants it to be. Heck, why not just hire Sheryl Sandberg over from Facebook? That hook-up would blow the advertising industry away. Other names we saw suggested: BuzzFeed founder and Huff Post co-founder Jonah Peretti; new media guru Jeff Jarvis; Dealbook editor Andrew Ross Sorkin (not a technologist but a curious idea nonetheless). None of these sound very likely; the idea does point to what the company needs, though. But does The Times know what it wants? We don't know, but what we do know is that it doesn't want Janet Robinson, an apparently very capable but very 20th-century kind of executive.

She will reportedly take home a $15 million exit package, according to Reuters. Times staffers with stock options have seen the share price drop from over $35 at the beginning of Robinson's tenure in 2003 to less than $8 at opening on Tuesday.

Update: Dave Winer thinks the CEO needs to focus on better/wider Broad Band for NYC, as a platform for communicating with its community.

May31'2012 update: lots more back-story. Interviews with more than 30 people who are intimately familiar with different aspects of the Times’ business (none but a spokesperson would speak for attribution—this is the paper of record, after all) have made it clear that Gonzalez’s rise and Robinson’s fall, and the ensuing leadership vacuum inside the paper, were symptomatic of larger forces at work. Even as a new PayWall was erected on the Times’ website last spring to charge customers for access, the company’s performance, including an alarming dive in print advertising when other media companies were beginning to recover, was faltering, and Sulzberger was under pressure both financial and familial to throw Robinson overboard.

May'2014: 2014-05-14-NytimesAbramsonFired