Brink named retail/consumer editor at NY Times

New York Times business editor Ellen Pollock sent out the following announcement on Thursday:

I’m thrilled to announce that Bill Brink will be our new retail and consumer editor.

As media editor for the past few years, Bill has edited David Carr and Jim Rutenberg. He oversaw stories on President Trump’s assault on the media, Sheldon Adelson’s takeover of the Las Vegas newspaper, and the downfall of Bill O’Reilly.

Prior to joining Business Day, Bill held many posts in The New York Times newsroom.  In each he earned a reputation for his incisive and elegant editing. I’ve learned something about Bill’s strengths as an editor in recent days as he has tried hard to shape (and trim) this memo — even without reading it.

Bill really doesn’t want you to know, for example, that in his time at this newspaper he has supervised coverage of five Super Bowls, four World Series and the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.  He also doesn’t want you to know that he was head of continuous news during the Iraq War and later was managing editor of the sports publication Play, which won a National Magazine Award in 2008.

Bill is famous across the newsroom as a source for Giants tickets. “Something seriously weird is going on with that guy and his Giants tickets,” says a source who cannot be named, but whose initials are J.S. “He claims to have 2 seats, but every Monday for the past 15 years I’ve had the same strange experience: I enter the lobby and run into a couple of people who tell me they went to the Giants game the day before. “I got Brink’s tickets.” Then I run into a few more people on the elevator who say they went to the game. “Brink’s tickets.” Then a few editors on my desk. “Got Brink’s tickets.” I’m pretty sure I even overheard the sushi chef on 14 talking with sandwich guy one time about how much fun they’d had at the Giants game the day before, with “Brink’s tickets….The stadium seats 82,500 and it seems like about 80,000 of them use “Brink’s tickets” each week.”

But I digress.

The bottom line on Bill is that he is one of those editors who lives and breathes for his reporters, the kind that answers emails at kid’s sports games and will come in early and stay late to help shape stories.

Bill will start his new gig on September 26.