By Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press, 7/14/2003

Bill Keller (NYT Photo) Howell Raines Gerald Boyd (AP Photo) Blair on the cover of Newsweek.  LATEST NEWS Times names Bill Keller as editor  FROM NYTIMES.COM Registration required: NYT story on Keller's appointment Keller's biography from NYT Keller's recent Op-Ed columns Times coverage of Blair scandal

NEW YORK -- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Keller was appointed executive editor of The New York Times on Monday and said he hoped the paper could "quickly put the wounds behind us" from a devastating plagiarism scandal involving a rising young reporter.

Keller, 54, a former Times managing editor and foreign correspondent, was chosen by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. as the permanent replacement for Howell Raines.

Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd resigned under pressure on June 5, five weeks after the discovery that reporter Jayson Blair had fabricated parts of stories and lifted material for many of his reports.

Keller addressed a packed newsroom Monday morning after Sulzberger announced his appointment, which takes effect July 30. Additional members of Keller's team, including managing editor, will be named in the coming weeks.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Keller said he hoped his appointment marked a new phase for the newspaper, but added: "I won't honestly be able to say that we put everything behind us until I've looked at all the work that various committees are doing.

"I'm assuming we'll be making some changes, the way we do hiring and career development, putting in some additional safeguards to protect our credibility and integrity, and things like that," he added. "Yes, I'm hoping we can quickly put the wounds behind us and move on."

Keller was a top candidate for the job the last time around, when Joseph Lelyveld left as executive editor in 2001. Raines was picked instead, and Keller became a Times columnist and senior writer for the magazine.

Lelyveld came out of retirement to serve as interim executive editor after the scandal broke.

In a letter to the staff, Sulzberger said Keller "will use the weeks ahead to re-engage in the newsroom, plan his leadership team, and hear the findings of the Siegal Committee and other committees that are looking into our management and journalistic issues."

The publisher said those committees, consisting of Times staffers and two outside executives, would report their findings by the end of the month.

The May 1 resignation of Blair, 27, a national correspondent who had been at the paper for four years, set off a firestorm of criticism of top editors' decision to promote him and their failure to catch his mistakes. Many at the paper bitterly criticized the management style of Raines and Boyd.

The Times, in a 7,500-word story on May 11, said that Blair had plagiarized material, invented quotes and wrote stories under datelines of places he'd never been to in dozens of articles as a national reporter.

The paper described the episode as "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper."

The Blair fiasco was followed by the May 28 resignation of one of the paper's most celebrated reporters, Rick Bragg. A Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent, Bragg left the paper five days after the newspaper published an editors' note saying that a freelancer who had reported the bulk of one of Bragg's stories should have received credit.

Keller, who once described himself as a "reporter who spent his whole life swearing he'd never be an editor," joined the Times in 1984 as a Washington correspondent. He later worked in Moscow, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his coverage of the Soviet Union. He also headed the Times' bureau in Johannesburg and became foreign editor in 1995.

As a columnist, Keller often devoted his columns to foreign policy. While the Times was often perceived as opposing the action in Iraq, Keller backed it.

His columns also ranged from pieces on the city smoking ban to his personal story of losing a child before it was born.

He served as managing editor from 1997 to 2001.

Before joining the Times, Keller was a reporter for The Dallas Times Herald, the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report in Washington, and The (Portland) Oregonian.

Keller told the AP that a sense of stability had begun returning to the newsroom under Lelyveld's interim leadership.

"The place has calmed down a lot," he said. "It feels like a newsroom again. People aren't so self-absorbed as they were, and they're getting on with their work."

Keller said he hoped his appointment "will accelerate that process."

Some staffers agreed.

"This is the end of the self-absorption over Jayson Blair," said Walt Baranger, assistant to the editor in the News Technology department. "Bill will be a very steadying force."