Rebuilding the media desk at the NYTimes

Margaret Sullivan, the public editor at the New York Times, writes about the newspaper’s plans to rebuild its media desk.

Sullivan writes, “Peter Lattman told me that he’s proud of three hires he made last year, not long after being named media editor at the end of 2013: Alexandra Alter, from The Wall Street Journal, who covers the publishing industry; Jonathan Mahler, from Bloomberg View, who covers large media companies; and Ms. Steel, from The Financial Times, assigned to the television industry.He also pointed to The Times’s coverage of the Sony email hacking story, especially work by the movie industry reporters Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply.

“Now, after the number of media reporters and editors has declined by more than a third (from 16) after the staff reductions, The Times expects to transfer some reporters to the media desk from other departments and appoint a new TV reporter from within. Those moves might take place as early as this week.

“As for replacing Mr. Carr, Times editors — including the business editor, Dean Murphy — said they would approach that realistically.

“’You don’t set about creating a star,’ Mr. Baquet told me. ‘If you do that, you’ll pick somebody for the wrong reasons.'”

Read more here.