NY Times hires FT’s Bintliff as its UK editor

New York Times international editor Phil Pan sent out the following:

Britain has a rich journalistic tradition, with a deeply engaged and competitive media landscape that produces a wealth of important reporting. It is also home to one of our biggest audiences outside the United States, and to our largest international newsroom, which has more than doubled in size in the past five years.

Under the leadership of one of our most senior international editors, Bill Brink, and our London bureau chief, Mark Landler, along with an experienced team of journalists from across the newsroom, we have dramatically increased our coverage of the broader region.

Now, as we continue investing in our global ambitions, we are thrilled to announce a new editor to oversee coverage of the United Kingdom on the International desk: Esther Bintliff. Esther joins us from The Financial Times, where she has worked for 15 years, most recently as the deputy editor on the FT Weekend Magazine.

Working closely with other editors in the London newsroom, Esther will build on our success in delivering distinctive reporting and writing on a wide range of subjects in the United Kingdom, from politics and the media to diplomacy and the royal family.

She brings deep experience to the role, serving as both a writer and an editor since joining The Financial Times in 2008. She has worked as a media correspondent, a European news editor, and a culture editor. Along the way, she helped create a newsletter and a podcast.

As the deputy editor at the magazine and acting editor for a year, she commissioned and edited a look at how Britain’s private schools lost their grip on Oxbridge; Steve Bannon’s alt-right academy — and one Italian village’s fight to stop it; and Simon Kuper’s influential essay, “How Oxford University shaped Brexit — and Britain’s next prime minister.” She has also shepherded award-winning dispatches (Neil Munshi’s report on the growing influence of Russia’s Wagner Group in the Central African Republic); historical detective dramas (“How three amateurs cracked a 445-year-old code to reveal Mary Queen of Scots’ secrets“); and political profiles (“Robert Habeck was Germany’s most popular politician. Then he took office“).

Before becoming a journalist, Esther worked in film distribution and then film production, including as the producer’s runner on “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” She is still an avid cinema fan, fascinated by how storytelling works across visual and written formats.

And if this story by Esther on giving feedback is any guide, we know she will have just the right touch for our team.

Esther will start in the London newsroom at the beginning of August, working closely with Bill in the first weeks of the transition. Ever core to our coverage, Bill will focus on Russia and Ukraine, along with helping to manage and edit our broader international report.