Floyd Norris taking buyout from New York Times

Floyd Norris, the chief financial correspondent of The New York Times who writes a two columns a week for the business section, is taking the newspaper’s buyout offer and leaving the paper after 26 years.

His last day will be Dec. 19.

“After many years of doing two columns a week, I think it might be interesting to do something else, perhaps at a foundation or university, or perhaps writing on a less hectic schedule,” said Norris in an email to Talking Biz News. “If other opportunities arise, I will consider them, but for a while, I expect I expect simply to take a break and be happily retired.”

He was named to his current post in September 1999, after spending a more than a year as a member of the editorial board of The Times. He joined the paper in October 1988 as a financial columnist, a position he held until he joined the editorial board in May 1998.

Before joining The Times, Norris had been with Barron’s since December 1982, where he began as a staff writer and subsequently was promoted to stock market editor. He began writing “The Trader” column in mid-1983 and was cited by the New York Society of Certified Public Accountants for outstanding reporting on accounting issues in 1984. In 1998, he was cited by the Financial Writers Association of New York for outstanding lifetime achievement.

He and his wife, Christine Bockelmann, compiled and edited “The New York Times Century of Business,” which was published by McGraw-Hill in late 1999.

Norris began his career in journalism as a reporter for the College Press Service, a news service for college newspapers, in September 1969. From September 1970 to January 1972, he was a reporter and editor for The Manchester (N.H.) American, a newspaper he helped to found. From January 1972 to August 1974, he was a reporter for The Concord (N.H.) Monitor, covering the state legislature and politics.

From August 1974 to December 1977, he worked for UPI. In 1977 and 1978 he was press secretary to, then, Sen. John Durkin. From 1978 to 1981 he was a business writer and editor for the Associated Press.

Born in Los Angeles on Sept. 6, 1947, Norris attended the University of California in Irvine. He was a Walter Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia University for two terms and received an MBA in 1982.