NY Times hires Rose, former WSJ chief enterprise editor

New York Times opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury sent out the following on Wednesday:

I announced in December that Opinion would create a leadership role of editorial director to oversee our Guest Essay department, our International coverage and our Video team — three vital parts of Opinion that produce much of our most important work, particularly from writers, thinkers and filmmakers outside The Times. I wanted to take the time necessary to find an outstanding journalist with deep experience creating ambitious, idea-driven coverage in the United States and globally. I’m excited to announce we’ve hired Matthew Rose.

Matthew has had a decorated career as an editor and reporter, spent largely at The Wall Street Journal in London, Washington and New York. In his most recent position, he was the chief enterprise editor at The Journal, where he helped oversee the newsroom’s most ambitious coverage, from daily news features to projects that won Pulitzer Prizes and Polk and Loeb awards. Notable examples include coverage of Donald Trump’s payoffs to Stormy Daniels and the Facebook Files series, which revealed how much the platform knows about the harm it causes.

Matthew will be a key part of my leadership team, joining Patrick Healy, Meeta Agrawal, Brian Zittel; Meeta was promoted to editorial director for Special Projects, Graphics and Photography in December, and Brian to managing editor for Opinion. For this new position, we interviewed a diverse range of exceptional candidates, and Matthew stood out for his intellectual rigor and curiosity, his ambition and his reputation as an excellent colleague and responsive manager. In extensive conversations with me, Patrick, Meeta and others, Matthew impressed us with smart questions and ideas about how we generate and elevate pieces, the ways we surprise and challenge our readers, how our opinion journalism reflects our broader mission and the work needed to find new and sharp voices from different areas of expertise and across the ideological spectrum. We were also drawn to Matthew’s creative energy: He initiated formats for enterprise journalism at The Journal that included video investigations and visual stories and transformed a print-focused desk into a digital operation that significantly boosted subscriptions.

“Matthew was a vital voice for pushing The Journal’s report forward digitally,” one of his references told me, “but where he truly shines is in helping to generate sophisticated ideas and somehow managing to elevate them even further with his edits.” In other words, the lifeblood of Opinion’s success.

Matthew articulated a clear vision for amplifying the already great work of the teams he will head up, and I’m confident he will be a terrific partner to me and the department’s leadership in helping to set editorial strategy for a range of journalism: quick-turn arguments off the news, idea-driven essays and videos, enterprising series involving a range of outside writers and energetic opinion work on long-running story lines like the Middle East conflict and the challenges to democracy in the United States and abroad.

Previously, Matthew was an editor for The Journal in Washington, including as deputy bureau chief, where he helped lead coverage of some of the biggest stories from that period, including the financial crisis, the Obama presidency and wars in Syria and Afghanistan. He was also an editor on the Page One desk, a media reporter in New York and a technology reporter in London. Born in London, he was educated at Oxford University and Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and currently teaches at the Columbia University School of Journalism.

Please join me in welcoming him.