Editor changes announced on New York Times business desk

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

New York Times business editor Larry Ingrassia has made the following announcement:

“The makeover of Business Day continues, with several moves involving talented editors: one leaving, one staying (with a new assignment) and one coming.

“I am pleased to announce that Vindu Goel, who has been a deputy technology editor, will become Business Day’s editor overseeing energy coverage, replacing Justin Gillis, Bizday’s human encyclopedia, who will become The Times’s reporter on environmental science, with responsibility for covering climate change and other topics.

“And Suzanne Spector, an editor on the National desk, will move to Bizday, becoming a deputy tech editor.

“Justin has been a terrific editor and great colleague since joining The Times from the Washington Post, nearly three years ago. We will miss him, not least because he knows more facts about things important and trivial than any other half dozen editors. But we are happy that he will be able to pursue a topic about which he is passionate (and, it goes without saying, very knowledgeable).

“Taking over Justin’s energy portfolio will be Vindu, who came to Bizday from the San Jose Mercury News two years ago; he will also have some other reporters in his cluster, but with so many changes in the department, we’re still working out the details, to be announced soon.

“Working with tech editor Damon Darlin and deputy tech editor David Gallagher, Vindu has helped expand our coverage of technology, particularly on the Web. Together they have made Bits and our other online tech offerings among the most widely visited destinations on nytimes.com. Tech-coverage traffic has increased dramatically, no easy feat given the intense competition on the Web from a variety of publications big and small.

“Vindu spent nearly a decade at the Merc, including stints as business editor, columnist and blogger. During his time as a business editor, the Mercury News won numerous general-excellence awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. He became especially interested in the alternative energy business while reporting from Silicon Valley (and even wrote a  memo back around the time he was joining the paper about ways we could ramp up our coverage of the alternative energy business).

“I am also pleased to welcome Suzanne Spector to Business Day. Suzanne, who will report to Damon Darlin and work with David Gallagher, joined The Times in 1994 and most recently worked as the Web editor on the National desk. Before that, Suzanne worked on a number of other desks, a testament to her talents as an editor as well as to her versatility and intellectual curiosity.

“She was deputy education editor, under Alison Mitchell, and also ran the education group on her own for six months before it was consolidated with the National and metro desks. She worked on the Culture desk (on the Friday Weekend section); City Weekly (as deputy editor); the Regional weeklies (as arts editor and Connecticut deputy editor); and has done stints on Science and Style, as well as an earlier stint on the National desk, when she edited O.J. Simpson trial stories and coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing.

“Suzanne, who grew up in Brooklyn, got her undergraduate degree at Cornell and a law degree from Boston University.  She practiced law for nearly a decade, in white-collar criminal defense and civil litigation, and also taught legal writing at Hofstra Law School before becoming intrigued by journalism. She also worked at the New York Law Journal and National Law Journal before joining the Times.”