Categories: OLD Media Moves

Joe Nocera’s winningly blunt, acerbic personality

Hugo Lindgren, who became editor of The New York Times Magazine, writes about Joe Nocera, who recently moved from a Times business columnist position to the editorial page.

Lindgren writes, “Last fall, he was a top candidate for the job as editor of this magazine, and miraculously, I ended up with it instead. I didn’t know him well at the time. In fact, the only real conversation I’d had with him before then was when I tried to lure him to come work with me at Bloomberg Businessweek. I liked him instantly, though, and before I even moved in to my new office here, we had lunch, and I asked him to be my part-time consigliere, while he kept writing his Saturday column for the business page.

“This was, of course, completely self-serving on my part. I wanted Joe on my team. As a business journalist and a magazine maker, he has few peers. He has worked at a ton of top-notch places — Washington Monthly, Texas Monthly, Newsweek, Esquire, GQ and Fortune — and he’s not even that old and creaky. Somehow he also found the time to write “All the Devils Are Here”, an excellent account of the financial crisis, with Bethany McLean.

“More impressive than Joe’s resume is his winningly blunt, acerbic personality. He started coming to our weekly ideas meetings, and he shook them up every time. Few of us will ever forget the hourlong war of words he incited over the merits of Malcolm Gladwell’s journalism. It was incredible fun. In private, Joe’s counsel to me has been clear and consistent: Don’t worry about the magazine other people want you to make. Make the magazine you want to read. Trust your instincts. Oh, and make sure to assign me lots of big features.”

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Diane says:
July 11, 2011 at 5:22 am
A story that could only have beeen written about a man. A female journalist, no matter how impressive her resume, with a "blunt, acerbic personality" who incited a "war of words" would get far less flattering coverage.