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By Melanie Jones: Subscribe to Melanie's RSS feed
December 16, 2011 11:30 AM EST
Janet Robinson, chief executive at The New York Times and the first woman to become president and CEO of the The Times company, is quitting the paper, and both those within the company and without are scratching their heads as to why.
As the company continues to struggle with a years-long slump in share prices and fights to keep subscribers, Robinson's exit after seven years at The Times Co. has caught both outside analysts and company insiders completely by surprise.
Robinson's tenure, while rocky, has had many impressive successes to its name, and her departure comes with no preparation or replacement waiting in the wings. All of which begs the question: Why is Janet Robinson stepping down?
First Woman to Head New York Times
When Janet Robinson became the first woman to head The Times Co. in 2004, she entered at a crucial crossroads in the newspaper industry, one in which print newspapers prepared to spend the next decade finding a new and at times awkward compromise between old and new media.
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Though Robinson, 61, did much to broaden the company's national reach and increase revenue from new initiatives online, her tenure also saw The New York Times slashing staff as print advertising revenue took a steep dive and the company itself teetered into debt.
And while fellow company papers The Boston Globe and The International Herald Tribune were saved from being axed, The Times Co. had to sell most of its midtown Manhattan headquarters in 2009 to raise cash, and even borrowed money from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim at steep interest rates in order to make ends meet.
In all, however, Robinson remained a largely positive and pioneering figure in the journalism industry during her 28 years at The Times, making her departure all the more shocking.
Could Stock Prices Be Reason for Robinson's Exit?
The Times Co. gave no explanation for Janet Robinson's abrupt departure, and Robinson herself gave no prior notice before the announcement that she would step down yesterday.
Even more unusual is the fact that her resignation comes just as Martin Nisenholtz, the company's longtime digital leader, announced his own resignation. Although publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. plans to oversee the company in the short-time, Robinson and Nisenholtz's joint departures mean that The Times Co. will enter 2012 without a CEO, long-term president or digital boss.
As analysts and insiders continue to scratch their heads over Robinson's unexpected exit, however, some have already begun to speculate that the CEO, who had been with The Times for 28 years, had been undone by bad stock numbers and was pressured to step down.
"It is very unusual to have a long-time CEO suddenly announce her leaving within two weeks with no replacement," Evercore Partners analyst Douglas Arthur told Reuters. "She's done a lot of good things, but at the end of the day the stock price is the ultimate measure of success."
On that count, at least, The Times Co.'s performance over the past decade has been sorely lacking.
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