Charles Blow returns to the New York Times as a “new kind of columnist.” Full memo after the jump.
When last seen around these here parts, or at least the parts on 43rd Street, Charles was in the newsroom, helping to guide the paper’s design as deputy design director for news, a position that he created.
Before that, of course, he was our pioneering Graphics Editor, introducing Times readers to the kind of ambitious, authoritative and beautiful charts, maps and other kinds of graphics that are now an ingrained part of our journalism. Charles left The Times for a new challenge, at National Geographic Magazine, where he was Art Director, rebuilding the art department and attracting world-renowned visual journalists. In addition to producing scientific illustrations, maps and graphics, his staff developed and pitched stories.
He is returning to us as a columnist, but an entirely new kind of columnist a visual columnist, if you will. Charles will do his own Op-Charts, lending his formidable skills and distinct style to that form of opinion journalism. And, equally exciting, he will create a new kind of journalistic space on our website. I’d call it a blog if I were given to using that word. Charles envisions a gathering place for visual journalists, especially those who use numbers and images and charts to express opinion. It will be just the kind of “you won’t find it anywhere else” feature that ought to be on nytimes.com.
Charles will be working from the columnist zone on the 13th floor. I was devastated when he left The Times, because he was a great colleague, a great mind and a great leader. I couldn’t be happier to welcome him back.
— Andy Rosenthal
Thank you for writing a great article on Charles Blow. He is a wonderful writer and designer. I’m so glad a man of color is highlighted in the NYT. Thanks again and keep writing.
Janean M. Courtney
Atlanta GA
As a certified cyberidiot I have never even tried a Blog. I hope to find effective designs tracking down Charles on his unluckily numbered 13th floor. Yikes, all the NYT Op Edifiers captive on that numerically negative floor? That’s almost as strong a penalty as the suppressed racism Blow so shrewdly blew wide open.I have come to believe as a retired Professor Of American Lit that Am Lit is the greatest unread Lit in the history of Mankind. And I warned my students that a People who don’t read their Great Wrters eventually lose their minds, as is patently evident in our most illiterate President (So Far). He’s the One who told his Harvard MBA professor that he found Steinbeck’s “Grapes” boring!Folks who subscribe to the infantile slogan that “America is still the Alltime Hit on Humanity’s Hit Parade”(that was Adman Thinker Fairfax Cone’s ploy to stop the 1957 Recession!)are not reading Am Lit enough. Technically, they’re NUTS.
Great article on Charles thanks Andy. you have given very interesting information about Charles. Keep writting…
wow, OK
this is so stupid
i don’t even know who this chrles guy is
wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
poopie face!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just want to say…
Charley Blow.You Rocks…....
Great article on Charles thanks Andy. you have given very interesting information about Charles ...