Howell Raines, who left the NYT in disgrace after the Jayson Blair affair, will be writing a media column for Conde Nast Portfolio.
“He knows politics extremely well, so the timing is fortuitous,” said Joanne Lipman, editor in chief of the magazine. But she said that his primary role, in a time of rapid and difficult change for the media, would be as “someone to look to, to understand the landscape and make sense of what’s going on.”
Mr. Raines and Ms. Lipman both said it was only natural that he would write about the newspaper he left. “It seems to me it’s artificial not to write about The Times when it’s appropriate,” he said. But, he added, “I don’t see it as a forum for settling old scores or revisiting things.”
He concedes that when he writes about The Times, some readers will see personal agendas in his comments, fairly or not. But, he said, “If you go through the kind of controversy we went through, you see that you can’t control what’s said and you drive yourself crazy trying to manage it.”