Editor’s talk will explore what’s 'on the horizon' for The New York Times

Jill Abramson, executive editor of The New York Times, will discuss the newspaper’s future in a talk at Yale on Friday, Nov. 4.

Titled “The New York Times: On the Horizon,” the talk will take place at 4 p.m. in the Memorabilia Room of Sterling Memorial Library, entrance at 128 Wall St. The event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale.

Abramson became executive editor of The New York Times in September 2011. Previously she was managing editor of the paper 2003-2011. In that role, Abramson helped supervise coverage of two wars, four national elections, hurricanes, and oil spills. She also writes about politics, as well as for the Week in Review and Book Review sections. She served as Washington bureau chief 2000-2003.  She joined the newspaper in 1997 and became Washington editor in 1999.

Before joining the Times, Abramson worked at The Wall Street Journal 1988-1997. While there, she served as deputy bureau chief in its Washington, D.C., bureau and as an investigative reporter, covering money and politics.

From 1986 to 1988 she was editor-in-chief of Legal Times, a weekly newspaper in Washington, D.C.  Before joining that publication, Abramson was a senior staff reporter for The American Lawyer for nearly a decade. While an undergraduate at Harvard, she worked at Time magazine 1973-1976.

Abramson is co-author of “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas,” published in 1994, and “Where They Are Now: The Story of the Women of Harvard Law 1974,” published in 1986. The former, detailing the circumstances surrounding the confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas, was a non-fiction finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994.

Abramson won the National Press Club award for national correspondence in 1992 for political coverage of money and politics.

She teaches an undergraduate journalism seminar in Yale’s English Department during the spring term and is embarking on her fifth year there. During the 2000-2001 fall term, she was a Ferris Professor at Princeton University, teaching an undergraduate seminar on politics and journalism.

Abramson is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.  She serves on the Journalism Advisory Board of ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. She also serves on the board of visitors of Columbia University’s School of Journalism.

Nelson Poynter ’27 M.A. established the Poynter Fellowship at Yale to enable the University to bring to its campus distinguished reporters, editors, and others who have made important contributions to the media. By sponsoring symposia and conferences on issues of broad public concern and by bringing to the university some of the most outstanding journalists from the United States and abroad, the Poynter Fellowship has helped Yale students and faculty gain insight into the media and its role in contemporary culture.