Who

Keller is executive editor of the New York Times. He reports to Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

Backstory

The son of former Chevron CEO George Keller, Bill went to Pomona and worked at Portland's Oregonian from 1970 to 1979, later taking jobs at Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report and the Dallas Times Herald. In 1984, Keller joined the Times; two years into his tenure, he was dispatched to Moscow, where he impressed his editorial bosses back in New York with his dogged reporting of the unraveling of the Soviet Union and walked away with a Pulitzer for his efforts. (It was also in Moscow that he became friends with David Remnick, who was with the Washington Post at the time.)

In 1992 Keller left Moscow to cover another disintegrating regime, the apartheid government of South Africa, serving as the Times' bureau chief in Johannesburg. Returning to New York in the mid-90s, he became managing editor under Joe Lelyveld. In 2001, Keller was passed over for the top editorial job in favor of Howell Raines; after a stint as an op-ed columnist for the paper, he took over as executive editor 21 months later, when Raines was forced out in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.

Of note

Arthur Sulzberger Jr. reportedly had doubts about naming Keller executive editor. In the end, though, Pinch viewed the low-key, unassuming editor as the sort of calming, stabilizing force that could heal the paper after Raines' tumultuous tenure. (And the selection of Keller came as a great relief to the paper's editorial staff.) Yet Keller has had to deal with plenty of tumult himself since taking over. After restoring order in the newsroom and attempting to mend the damage done to the paper's reputation by plagiarist Jayson Blair, he was saddled with the messy Judy Miller affair and with allegations that the reporter's pre-Iraq War reporting had been laden with inaccuracies. Keller was painfully slow to react: It took nearly 10 months for the Times to launch an investigation and more than a year for Keller to acknowledge the paper's mistakes and orchestrate Miller's ouster.

Although he managed to survive the grim chapter—his 2005 decision to publish stories about NSA's domestic-spying activities over the protests of the Bush administration helped redeem his rep—troubles at the paper endure. Declining circulation has resulted in substantial cutbacks, some quite literal—the paper shrunk an inch and a half in 2007. Newsgathering efforts have been reduced. And to Keller's dismay, advertising was added to the front page of the paper and more emphasis has been placed on money-making sections (thus the introduction of "Thursday Styles"). The news at nytimes.com has been decidedly cheerier: Traffic has increased, online advertising revenue is up, and the site had debuted a series of popular new features. But there have been failures on the Net, too. TimesSelect, the $49.95-a-year premium content service that Keller unveiled to great fanfare in September 2005, was axed in September 2007.

On the job

Keller has led the newsroom with a fairly steady—if somewhat removed—hand. Notoriously confrontation-averse, much of the heavy lifting is done by Keller's deputies, including managing editor Jill Abramson and deputy managing editor Jon Landman, who is now overseeing the online editorial efforts. Keller himself reports to Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Andy Rosenthal, who oversees the editorial pages—the one section that Keller is not responsible for—reports to Pinch as well.

Personal

Keller met his current wife, Emma Gilbey, when she wrote a letter to the editor about a piece he'd written in the paper. He called her and invited her to stop by the office for coffee. The only problem: He was married at the time to reporter Ann Cooper. Keller later divorced Cooper after Gilbey became pregnant. (He tied the knot with Gilbey in 1998.) Keller has a total of three children: Tom (whom he adopted while living in Russia with his first wife), and Molly and Alice (whom he had with Gilbey). They live on West End Avenue.