As Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth considers editor Leonard Downie's successor, MarketWatch's Jon Friedman suggests she look at the New York Times' Jonathan Landman. Despite the historic rivalry between the two papers and their traditional reluctance to cross-hire, Friedman believes Landman is most suited for the job because of his "solid understanding of the web."
"He [Landman] helps manage the Times' well-regarded digital effort, and such managerial experience in an online operation is arguably the No. 1 requirement for any leader of a media company today," Friedman writes.
Friedman admits that hiring Landman would not be the easy move for Weymouth. Circumventing her own newsroom to bring in a Times editor would not sit well with most Post reporters.
"He'd have to win over a newsroom of talented and tough-minded journalists, and many of them would naturally be suspicious of someone who came from the Times," Friedman writes.
But Friedman insists that the benefits of hiring Landman would far outweigh any internal backlash Weymouth would have to endure. Landman's knowledge of digital media could prove invaluable as newspapers increasingly shift their operations to the Internet.
