New York Times Names a New National Editor

The New York Times on Friday named Alison Mitchell, its weekend editor, as the paper’s new national editor.

Ms. Mitchell joined The Times in 1992 as a metro reporter, then moved on to work as a White House correspondent and to cover Congress. She ran the Washington bureau’s Congressional coverage and, as an editor, oversaw the paper’s education desk. She has worked as The Times’s weekend editor since 2008.

She graduated from Harvard University and started her career at The Record in Bergen County, N.J. She joined The Times from Newsday, where she worked for 15 years. She covered politics there, among other subjects, and was a Moscow correspondent in her last assignment.

In a memo to the newsroom, Jill Abramson, the executive editor, said about Ms. Mitchell that “national editor is the job she was born to do.”

Ms. Mitchell is replacing Sam Sifton, who has been asked by Ms. Abramson to spearhead two new digital initiatives. The first is to create an online magazine that focuses on longer, interactive projects like the Snow Fall package that won a Pulitzer Prize this year. Mr. Sifton, a former restaurant critic for the paper who has edited the dining section and led the culture department, is additionally working to create a dining news product for The Times.

Mr. Sifton, a graduate of Harvard as well, came to The Times in 2002. He was a founding editor of Talk Magazine and worked for 10 years at The New York Press, including two years as managing editor.