Categories: OLD Media Moves

Convincing Krugman to write about economics for the NYT

Howell Raines writes in the latest issue of Conde Nast Portfolio about New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman, who won a Nobel Prize earlier this year and whom Raines hired back in 1999.

Raines writes, “Around 1999, New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. told me he wanted to hire the first full-time economics columnist in the paper’s 150-year history. It was a dream job. A Times economics columnist could hold sway in his field the way James Reston did on politics or, more recently, Thomas Friedman did on foreign policy.

“As editorial-page editor at the paper, I took the train up to Cambridge to recruit a young Harvard professor whose work I had seen on Slate and elsewhere. So factor into my praise for Krugman whatever bias arises from my having recruited him for the Times. While I am proud of his work, he and I did not go on to become close pals; we had not spoken in more than five years when I called to congratulate him on the Nobel.

“We reminisced over his initial doubts upon being offered the Times job. Back then, I amused Sulzberger and other colleagues by quoting Krugman’s jittery initial response to our offer: He was afraid that dirtying his hands in daily journalism would ruin his chances of winning the Nobel Prize. He went on to explain, with an innocent candor seldom encountered in New York or Washington, that aiming at a Nobel was not the long shot for an economist that it would be for a novelist or physicist.”

Read more here.

Recent Posts

Dynamo hires former Business Insider executive editor Harrington

Former Business Insider executive editor Rebecca Harrington has been hired by Dynamo to be its…

13 hours ago

Bloomberg TV hires Kerubo as desk producer

Bloomberg Television has hired Brenda Kerubo as a desk producer in London. She will be covering Europe's…

13 hours ago

Jittery CNBC staff reassured by new boss

In a meeting at CNBC headquarters Thursday afternoon, incoming boss Mark Lazarus presented a bullish…

13 hours ago

Making business news accessible to a wider audience

Ritika Gupta, the BBC's North American business correspondent, was interviewed by Global Woman magazine about…

13 hours ago

Rest of World hires Lo as China reporter

Rest of World has hired Kinling Lo as a China reporter. Lo was previously a…

14 hours ago

Bloomberg rises to No. 7 biz news website

Bloomberg News saw strong unique visitor growth to its website in October, passing Fox Business…

14 hours ago