Just the woman to revive the Gray Lady

With the print media facing its greatest challenge, the world’s most powerful newspaper, ‘The New York Times’, has high hopes for its first woman editor

FRIENDS AND colleagues of Jill Abramson, the new executive editor of the

New York Times

, describe her as fiercely intelligent, an omnivorous reader, quick-witted, determined and decisive. She is the survivor of political battles with the US government and within her own newspaper, where she has led the embrace of internet integration.

Four years ago she was mowed down by a refrigerator lorry in Manhattan, but that didn’t stop her.

One would expect exceptional qualities in the editor of the world’s most powerful newspaper. Perhaps more surprisingly, Abramson, now aged 57, has also managed to preserve a happy family life with the husband she met at Harvard and their two children, both now adult.

"She makes things look easy that are hard for everybody else," says Jane Mayer, a writer for the New Yorkerand Abramson's oldest friend. "She gets an incredible amount of stuff done, fast."

Mayer has known Abramson since they went to school together in Manhattan. Abramson became Time magazine's stringer at Harvard, while Mayer wrote for the same publication from Yale. Years later, in Washington, the New York Timescolumnist Maureen Dowd – who brought Abramson to the Timesin 1997 – would become the third member of what has been called their "triumvirate".

In Washington, Mayer was the first female White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Abramson became the editor of the Legal Timesat the age of 31, but was then poached by the Journal. The two women went to the gym together, and co-authored Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, which made them bugbears of the American right.

Asked about Abramson’s work style, Mayer says her friend “just gets right down to business. She just plain does what she needs to do. She barrels ahead. She knows what priorities to spend time on. She doesn’t waste time worrying and remaking decisions.”

Since 2003, when she returned from her post as Washington bureau chief to become managing editor, Abramson has worked closely with Bill Keller, the Times's departing executive editor. "She's an investigative reporter by temperament," Keller told New Yorkmagazine in a profile of Abramson published last autumn. "The investigative reporter in you makes you alert to hidden agendas. I tend to see the good in people. Jill is more wary and suspicious. She's the perfect person to have at my back."

The same profile noted that Abramson is “both respected and feared” and “can be an imperious boss, critical when she thinks the Times is falling behind competitors”. The word “tough” recurs in reports about her.

Mayer explains this toughness in another way. “She has very high standards because she lives up to them herself,” she says. “I think of her as an incredibly generous and warm friend.”

When they used to go to the YMCA in Washington together, Abramson knew staff at the gym and their family histories. She continued supervising girl-scout camping expeditions after her daughter Cornelia left, because she liked it. And Abramson helped raise one of her son William’s school friends, an African-American from the impoverished area of Anacostia, also called William.

When Abramson's appointment was announced on June 2nd every report emphasised that she was the first woman editor in the Times's 160-year history. "When will we stop saying, 'First woman to . . .?'" Abramson asked in an opinion piece five years ago when Katie Couric became the first female solo television anchor in the US.

Suzanne Daley, now the paper's European correspondent, served as the Times's national editor from 2005 until 2010. There were powerful women at the paper before Abramson, Daley says, but "she was the first woman who reached such high levels who seemed to really take an interest in the women behind her. She was responsible for many of the appointments of women after she became managing editor. She had a party at her house for each and every one of us."

At present the editors of the Times's metro, foreign, weekend, science, education and environment sections are all women. "She shows a comfort level with that which is magnificent," says Daley.

Abramson has a self-deprecating sense of humour. She often tells the story of her grandfather, a maker of women’s hats, who was offered the chance to join in the founding of 20th Century Fox. He declined, on the grounds that motion pictures were a fad, whereas ladies would always need hats.

The anecdote has a certain resonance for the new media/old media divide that is revolutionising journalism. The outgoing Timeseditor, Bill Keller, dared to criticise "news aggregators", such as the Huffington Post, and the Twitter social network. Abramson is too savvy to pick a fight of that kind. Instead, last summer she took six months off from the newsroom to study the Times's internet operation, leaving her chief rival for the editor's job in charge. It was a gamble, but it paid off.

“The business is changing, and she has proven herself very clever in standing back and remaking parts of the organisation,” says Daley. “She came out of it with a whole plan for remaking relationships between the various desks and the internet. Until then the structure had kept the two organisations apart. She used her diagnostic skills to combine them, to put the organisation back together in a different way.”

Abramson’s level-headedness has seen her through other crises. The 1994 book she and Mayer wrote about Clarence Thomas dealt with allegations of sexual harassment against the US supreme court justice. A right-wing commentator, who later confessed to having lied, accused them of fabrication, and the charge was widely repeated.

“Jill was spectacular,” Mayer recalls. “She was so smart and disciplined. She got out our notes and organised our sources, and they defended us. She was amazing, killer good, fearless. We were under a lot of pressure, and we came through it. It was as dirty as politics gets in America. We saw the underbelly before a lot of people did.”

In another pivotal period in Abramson's career, she clashed with Howell Raines, the Times's executive editor from 9/11 until the start of the Iraq war in 2003. Raines is from the American south, while Abramson is an Ivy League-educated New Yorker. He supported certain reporters, including Judith Miller, an advocate of the Iraq war. Abramson came close to leaving the Timeswhen Raines tried to remove her as Washington bureau chief and place her in lesser jobs. Instead, when it transpired that Jayson Blair, another Raines protege, had plagiarised newspaper stories, it was Raines and his deputy who left, while Abramson's ascent began.

Abramson's appointment coincides withthe greatest financial crisis in the history of print media, and the need to squeeze profits from the Times's huge investment in news gathering will be paramount.

"She is willing to go and try new things and break the time-honoured mould of the New York Times," says Daley.

Abramson has already left her imprint on the Times, but Mayer expects her to shine, particularly in the upcoming presidential election. "There will be especially sophisticated coverage of money in politics, which is one of the things she really understands," she predicts.

Curriculum vitae

Why is she in the news?On June 2nd, Abramson was appointed the first woman editor in the New York Times's 160-year history.

Most likely to say: "I didn't get this job because I'm a woman, I got it because I'm the best-qualified person."

Least likely to say:"New media is just a passing fad."