Coming to a newsroom near you

Ariel Kaminer Goes Digital; Job Opening in A&L

Ariel Kaminer is the new deputy culture editor for online journalism. In his note, Sam Sifton wrotes, "As we continue to integrate the newsrooms of The Times and nytimes.com, we're going to need architects for the future… Ariel's the best person to do that."

We talk a lot in the abstract about the reinvention of our newsroom. We talk, too, about our newsroom's integration with the one at nytimes.com and what it means or will mean for our journalism. It's exciting, and scary, and we all wonder when it's going to happen.

The answer is: now. We have arrived at the moment when the culture department steps up to meet it future, to embrace it and by doing so define it; now comes the moment of what the Buddhists call "radical acceptance" of our digital future. It feels great.

Today I am appointing a deputy culture editor to oversee our online journalism, an editor responsible for working with our counterparts at nytimes.com to translate and vastly expand our journalism beyond its current limits. This editor will help lead the reinvention of the print culture report as multimedia venture, and in doing so help reinvent this newspaper as a new kind of enterprise, offering a new kind of journalism to the world.

It's an exciting job. And Ariel Kaminer has it. After a storied run at the head of Arts & Leisure, Ariel will now go digital. As deputy editor for online journalism, she will work with our colleagues at nytimes.com and all of us here on 43rd Street to bring the same depth of creativity and editorial skill that she's employed on the print side of our operation ­ first at the magazine, then as deputy editor of A&L and then as its editor ­ to all aspects of our online culture report.

Blogs, multimedia, e-mail newsletters (like the Urbaneye, of which she is the founding editor), video, user-generated content ­ that's just to start. As we continue to integrate the newsrooms of The Times and nytimes.com, we're going to need architects for the future, editors who can figure out ways, in Bill Keller's phrasing, "to reorganize our structures and our minds to make Web journalism, in forms that are both familiar and yet-to-be-invented, as natural to us as writing and editing, and to do all of this without losing the essential qualities that make us The Times."

For culture's marbles, Ariel's the best person to do that. Please join me in congratulating her.

Editor of Arts & Leisure? The job is posted herewith, though we've got a strong candidate. If you're interested in working on the section, though, please get in touch.