Kristof remembers former NYTimes biz editor Lee

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times writes Wednesday about his former boss, Times business editor John Lee, who died Tuesday night.

Kristoff writes, “In the fall of 1984, the business editor of The New York Times was John Lee, and he was aggressively cleaning out dead wood and hiring young reporters to compete more effectively with the Wall Street Journal. I was a would-be journalist just out of university with degrees in political science, law and Arabic — but utterly ignorant of business — headed to Tunisia where I was going to string from north Africa for The Washington Post.

“A college buddy, David Sanger, had just been hired by John for the business section, and he passed my resume along. So on my way to Tunisia I stopped by New York for an interview — and never got to Africa. John and his deputy, Fred Andrews, hired me to cover international economics.

“John was a fabulous editor and mentor and hired a remarkable number of young reporters who have percolated through many sections of the Times. Aside from David Sanger, those who arrived at about the same time as me included Todd Purdum and Richard Stevenson. News organizations are notorious for being managed by brilliant journalists who are catastrophic managers, but John Lee was an exception — a manager who knew how to bring out the best in his troops, and who inspired tremendous devotion among all of us.”

Read more here.