Richard J. Meislin, a New York Times editor who helped kick a tradition-bound newsroom into the internet age, changing how Times journalists gathered the news and how readers received it, died on Friday at a hospital in Manhattan. The cause was Merkel cell carcinoma, his husband, Dr. Hendrik Uyttendaele, said. Mr. Meislin retired in 2015 as The Times’s internet publishing consultant after a 40-year career in which he held a number of posts, among them associate managing editor for internet publishing; editor in chief of New York Times Digital, which included nytimes.com; and Mexico City bureau chief. Drawing on a passion that was evident in high school, when he worked with punch cards on a half-ton IBM 1620 computer, Mr. Meislin tried to convince skeptical colleagues in the 1990s that the internet was about to change journalism, not simply augment it. “He has been at the forefront of bringing advanced technology to The Times both to enhance our journalistic efforts and to improve how we present and distribute our content,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, and Tom Bodkin, the paper’s creative director, said in a joint statement announcing his retirement.

Source: New York Times June 25, 2021 15:33 UTC