New York Times Names Marc Lacey and Carolyn Ryan as Managing Editors

Joseph F. Kahn, newly appointed as the next executive editor of The New York Times, announced his leadership team on Wednesday in a memo that urged his colleagues “to produce the most ambitious, consequential and creative work of our careers.”

Two veteran Times journalists, Marc Lacey and Carolyn Ryan, are to serve as managing editors, the newsroom’s No. 2 role, starting on June 14.

“Both will share with me responsibility for overseeing the breadth of our coverage and news operation,” Mr. Kahn wrote in the memo, as well as “advancing major priorities like independence and trust, digital excellence and cultural transformation.”

Mr. Lacey, 56, is an assistant managing editor who previously oversaw The Times’s national coverage; before that, he was a Times correspondent in Mexico City; Nairobi, Kenya; Phoenix; and Washington.

Ms. Ryan, 57, is a deputy managing editor who most recently led recruiting for The Times, overseeing the hiring of more than 400 journalists, and she helped lead its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Before that, she was the paper’s political editor, Washington bureau chief and metropolitan editor.

Ms. Ryan will be the first openly gay journalist to serve as managing editor of The Times. Mr. Lacey is the third Black journalist to serve in the role, after Gerald Boyd and Dean Baquet, the current executive editor.

Mr. Kahn also announced four deputy managing editors.

Rebecca Blumenstein, currently the deputy editor in the publisher’s office and a deputy managing editor, will lead recruitment and operations. Sam Dolnick, currently an assistant managing editor, will continue to spearhead The Times’s expansion into audio, video, email newsletters and televised documentaries.

Steve Duenes and Clifford Levy will remain deputy managing editors. Mr. Duenes will oversee The Times’s visual and multimedia journalism. Mr. Levy will focus on ethical standards and journalistic independence, as well as training for editors throughout the newsroom.

Matthew Purdy, currently a deputy managing editor and a force behind many of The Times’s major investigative projects, will take on a senior, as-yet-undefined role, Mr. Kahn wrote.

In a joint interview, Mr. Lacey and Ms. Ryan said they intended to reimagine the role of a managing editor — once preoccupied with duties like selecting stories for the printed front page — given The Times’s growing digital footprint.

“It’s such a big, sprawling place,” Mr. Lacey said. “We produce more than 150 pieces of journalism every single day in all sorts of forms, and we want all of those to be excellent.”

Ms. Ryan added: “We are essentially and fundamentally driven by rigorous and original reporting, on-the-ground reporting. That has to be at the heart of everything that we do.”

Born in Flushing, Queens, Mr. Lacey grew up on the island of Jamaica and in Buffalo. At Cornell, he majored in biology and edited The Cornell Daily Sun around the same time that Mr. Kahn led The Harvard Crimson. He worked at The Buffalo News and The Los Angeles Times before joining The Times in 1999.

Ms. Ryan grew up outside Boston and attended Bates College in Maine, where she studied English literature. Her first job in journalism was at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass.; she was later metro editor and deputy managing editor at The Boston Globe, before joining The Times in 2007.

Mr. Lacey and Ms. Ryan collaborated in 2019 when The Times and CNN sponsored a Democratic presidential primary debate in Ohio. Mr. Lacey served as one of the moderators, and Ms. Ryan, a political junkie, worked alongside him during several weeks of planning sessions.

“We do happen to get along very well,” Mr. Lacey said, although he added, to Ms. Ryan’s laughter, that the two of them were fierce opponents at the Ping-Pong table.