Times hires TV editor

Kate Aurthur has been writing for Calendar, Vanity Fair, Slate and the New York Times. Her father Robert Alan Aurthur was a producer and writer of All that Jazz and worked in television. Memo follows:

To: The Staff
From: John Montorio, Associate Editor
Lennie LaGuire, Deputy Features Editor--Entertainment/News

We're delighted to announce that Kate Aurthur will be joining The Times next month as television editor.

Those who've followed Kate's work in our paper and in the pages of one of those Manhattan dailies know that she's a terrific writer and a plugged-in observer of the medium. Kate is someone who knows every nuance of the Nielsens and brings a smart viewer's passion and insight to a TV landscape that stretches from "The Amazing Race" to "24." (Don't even get her started on "The View.") It may be in her DNA, since Kate's parents met at NBC, where her mother worked in casting and her father was a writer. Robert Alan Aurthur later moved from the Golden Age of television to become an Academy Award-nominated producer and screenwriter for "All That Jazz," which he produced and wrote with Bob Fosse.

Beyond her expertise as a serious consumer and interpreter of television, Kate has earned a reputation as a collegial and imaginative team-builder with broad contacts in the industry.

Her experience also suggests a wide-ranging and curious mind and entrepreneurial spirit: Since graduating from Wesleyan with a B.A. in English literature, she has worked as a self-employed investor in the stock market; written a monthly New York magazine column called "Rat City," about the fight against urban rats; created Vanity Fair's annual "New Establishment Stock Index" feature; and worked as an editor and producer on NYTimes.com and as a guest editor in the paper's Arts & Leisure section. For the past two years, she has been a freelance culture writer.

Kate, who will report to Entertainment Editor Betsy Sharkey, brings a dynamic array of talents to our staff. Please join us in welcoming her when she begins her new assignment the week of July 10.