From a Washington Post column by David Von Drehle headlined “The New York Times’s new editor will inherit not just a newsroom, but a cult”:

News of a new editor to lead the New York Times triggered a memory. Abraham Lincoln was once asked about the glamour of the presidency. He answered with the story of a man who was tarred and feathered. This painful and humiliating mob punishment involved being stripped, covered with hot tar, then showered with plucked feathers that stuck to the blistering goo. In this condition, he was then compelled to perch on a wooden rail to be carried out of town.

From a story by CJR’s Mathew Ingram headlined “New editor at the Times faces the same old questions”:

A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, announced that Joseph Kahn would succeed Dean Baquet as the paper’s next executive editor in June. Kahn, 57, is a former international and managing editor of the paper, and also a Pulitzer Prize-winning former China correspondent. A profile in New York magazine describes Kahn as “the ultimate inside man” at the Times, someone for whom being named to the top job was almost a foregone conclusion. But some believe his status as a long-time company man could make it difficult for him to navigate the political and cultural challenges the paper faces.