The New York Times has named Chief Operating Officer Meredith Kopit Levien as its new chief executive, replacing Mark Thompson who is credited with pushing for the company’s successful transformation into an online publisher.

Levien joined the New York Times Co in 2013 as its advertising head after around five-year stint at Forbes. She was named chief operating officer in June 2017. Thompson, who has headed the company since 2012 and was previously director-general of the BBC, will also step down as director, the company said.

“I’ve chosen this moment to step down because we have achieved everything I set out to do when I joined The Times Company eight years ago — and because I know that in Meredith, I have an outstanding successor who is ready to lead the company on to its next chapter,” Thompson said in a statement.

The company’s “subscription-first” business model has helped it weather steep declines in advertising, and it has introduced subscription-based cooking and crosswords products to help diversify its audience. The Times’ subscription business represented two-thirds of the company’s revenue in the first quarter ending March 29.

Its digital business has been a beacon for other newspapers across a struggling industry. At the end of April, the Times had more than 6 million total subscriptions across digital and print - with more than 5 million digital-only subscriptions, according to a May 6 news release. The numbers reflected a record high for the company and the U.S. news industry broadly.

“We’re nowadays reaching about one in two Americans every month, including one in two millennials. So it’s a much broader base than it used to be,” he said. The change is effective from Sept. 8 and the company said Levien, will also join its board.

The Times entered several new businesses during Thompson’s tenure, including television programming. One of those new ventures, podcasting, will likely become another one of the Times’ subscription products, along with online recipes and crossword puzzles, Thompson said. Thompson said the Times is still looking to make acquisitions in the podcasting space.

Source- Reuters