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Appointments and Executive Changes

Biden Forms Task Force to Explore Ways to Help Labor

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President Biden signed an executive order on Monday creating a White House task force to promote labor organizing, an attempt to use the power of the federal government to reverse a decades-long decline in union membership.

The task force, to be led by Vice President Kamala Harris and populated by cabinet officials and top White House advisers, will issue recommendations on how the government can use existing authority to help workers join labor unions and bargain collectively. It will also recommend new policies aimed at achieving these goals.

The administration noted that the National Labor Relations Act, the 1935 law governing federal labor rights, explicitly sought to encourage collective bargaining, but that the law had never been fully carried out in this regard. “No previous administration has taken a comprehensive approach to determining how the executive branch can advance worker organizing and collective bargaining,” a White House statement declared.

Unions have lobbied for the passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, which would prohibit employers from holding mandatory anti-union meetings and impose financial penalties for violating workers’ labor rights. (Workers can currently receive only so-called make-whole remedies, like back pay.) The House passed the measure in March and Mr. Biden supports the legislation, but it faces long odds in the Senate.

The task force will focus on, among other things, helping the federal government encourage its own workers to join unions and bargain collectively, and finding ways to make it easier for workers, especially women and people of color, to organize and bargain in parts of the country and in industries that are hostile to unions.

President Donald J. Trump signed a handful of executive orders that sought to rein in union protections and bargaining rights for federal employees. The unions challenged the orders in court, and Mr. Biden revoked them shortly after taking office.

It is not entirely clear what kind of support the federal government could provide to workers seeking to organize short of changing the law, though some labor experts have argued that Mr. Biden and his appointees could use administrative action to allow workers to bargain on an industrywide basis, known as sectoral bargaining. That would make it less necessary to win union elections work site by work site, as is often the case today.

Seth Harris, a White House labor adviser, said the task force would explore the administration’s ability to increase unionization through federal procurement law, which requires the president to promote efficiency in government contracts.

“The simple fact of the matter is having a unionized work force means they are going to be paid more, they are more likely to be more productive, more likely to stay for a long time,” Mr. Harris said. “You’ll have more skilled, more experienced workers working on government procurement. You don’t have the same labor strife.”

As a general rule, the federal government probably cannot deny contracts to companies simply because they are hostile to labor unions, said Anastasia Christman, an expert on government contracting at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group. But in certain narrow cases, the government may be able to use its leverage as a contractor to encourage companies to take a neutral stance on organizing.

For example, if a federal agency were buying medical gloves from an aggressively anti-union company, it could tell the company that “your vehement anti-labor practices have demonstrated a higher risk for a labor disruption,” Ms. Christman said. She added that the agency might be able to conclude: “We can’t have $15 million worth of purple gloves stuck in a warehouse somewhere. We need to find a more reliable path to getting that stuff.”

Even before the announcement of the task force, many labor leaders regarded Mr. Biden as the most pro-union president in generations. They cited his quick ouster of Trump appointees they regarded as anti-labor, the tens of billions of dollars for shoring up union pension plans enacted in his pandemic relief bill and a video message during a recent union campaign at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama warning employers not to coerce or threaten workers who are deciding whether to unionize.

Many union advocates have compared him favorably with his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, who they complained was loath to support unions vocally.

The task force comes at a particularly frustrating moment for organized labor. Roughly two-thirds of Americans approve of unions, according to a 2020 Gallup poll, but just over 6 percent of private-sector workers belong to them.

Many union officials have cited the loss in the election at Amazon, whose results were announced this month, as an illustration of the need to reform labor law and develop new organizing strategies.

Mr. Biden’s task force will solicit the views of union leaders, academics and labor advocates and is to deliver its recommendations within 180 days.

Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh will serve as vice chair of the group, which will include Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the White House economic advisers Cecilia Rouse and Brian Deese, and the White House climate adviser, Gina McCarthy.

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Murdoch’s Pick to Run The New York Post Bets On the Web and Celebs

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Rupert Murdoch took a top editor from his brash and conservative London tabloid, The Sun, and put him in charge of his brash and conservative New York tabloid, The New York Post.

Keith Poole, a 44-year-old Englishman who remade The Sun’s website in recent years, started as The Post’s newsroom leader on March 22. Since then, most people on staff have yet to hear from him, two Post employees said.

He had lunch with Emily Smith, the longtime editor of The Post’s gossip franchise, Page Six, but has yet to host an all-hands video call to say hello to the staff, which has been working remotely, or send an email greeting, the two people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal matters. For some staff members, the only evidence of the new boss’s presence has been the addition of his name to the newsroom’s main channel on Slack, the messaging app.

A spokeswoman for The Post said in an email that Mr. Poole was getting to know the team in his own way: “Keith has been meeting a number of Post staff in person, on video calls and on the phone (since most are working from home), and he has had lunch with other staff, not just Emily.”

Mr. Poole effectively replaced Col Allan, an Australian tabloid specialist who retired in March after more than 40 years at Murdoch papers.

Mr. Poole has more experience in attracting online readers than his predecessor. Before joining The Sun as its digital editor in 2016, he helped make The Daily Mail’s U.S. website a must-read for followers of celebrity gossip.

“At The Sun, it’s all they focus on,” said Chris Spargo, a reporter who worked at both of Mr. Poole’s prior employers. Mr. Poole also sees The Daily Mail as The Post’s main rival, several people with knowledge of the Post newsroom said.

A former colleague said Mr. Poole does not fit the stereotype of the gruff, boisterous tabloid editor.

“Keith is charming and has that British wit about him,” said David Martosko, a former U.S. political editor at The Daily Mail who is now a senior content executive at Zenger News. “More people in our business should adopt his collaborative editing style.”

His responsibilities include not only the now-profitable New York tabloid that Mr. Murdoch pulled out of bankruptcy in the 1990s but also the larger The New York Post Group. That includes the Post Digital Network, which is made up of the paper’s website, a separate website for Page Six, the entertainment site Decider.com and the ad company Post Studios, as well as other media properties.

Mr. Poole, who studied at Loughborough University in England, arrived in New York at a time when most of the Post staff had been working from home for more than a year. At least eight of The Post’s journalists have left recently, including the White House correspondent Ebony Bowden and the Page Six editorial director Maggie Coughlan.

Credit…New York Post

Mr. Poole, who declined to be interviewed, worked at The Daily Mail from 2003 to 2016, spending part of that time in New York as the managing editor of its U.S. website, DailyMail.com. Within two years of going to work for Mr. Murdoch at The Sun, he transformed its website into the biggest online brand in the U.K. Last year he was named its deputy editor in chief.

In a 2018 interview, Mr. Poole said he focused on five key areas: news, celebrity, soccer, money and women’s lifestyle. While at The Sun, he met frequently with Robert Thomson, the chief executive of Mr. Murdoch’s newspaper company, News Corp, who was often in the London office before the pandemic, three people with knowledge of the relationship said.

Under Mr. Allan, The Post specialized in celebrity news and city coverage while also championing former President Trump and attacking his rivals. Under Mr. Poole, the paper has kept its focus on celebs and liberal villains, as the April 16 front page suggested. The left side showed Jennifer Lopez in a revealing costume under the headline, “Inside J-Rod’s Breakup.” On the right, a headline blasted Democrats: “PACK RATS. Backlash as Dems try to take over Supreme Court.”

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Steve Gilula and Nancy Utley Leaving Searchlight Pictures

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LOS ANGELES — One of corporate Hollywood’s most enduring double acts is calling it quits.

Steve Gilula and Nancy Utley, senior executives at Searchlight Pictures for 21 of its 27 years, who shaped global culture with Oscar-winning hits like “12 Years a Slave,” “Black Swan,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” announced their surprise retirement on Tuesday. They will leave the Disney-owned specialty studio by the end of June, adding to a conspicuous changing of the guard at Walt Disney Company.

“You don’t want to be the show that stays on the air two seasons too long,” Ms. Utley said. “Get out while everything is still going well.”

She was joking — mostly. Searchlight has long been the gold standard of art film studios, packing its slate with diverse offerings long before Hollywood got the memo, and thriving in a changing marketplace — the DVD collapse, the rise of streaming competitors — even as once-formidable competitors like the Weinstein Company imploded. If the latest Searchlight success, “Nomadland,” wins the Academy Award for best picture on Sunday, as many expect, Mr. Gilula, 70, and Ms. Utley, 65, will have taken the top prize in four of the last eight ceremonies. That is a run unmatched by any specialty studio, even Miramax, which at its height won three best-picture Oscars.

Searchlight’s previous best-picture winners have been “The Shape of Water” (2018), “Birdman” (2015) and “12 Years a Slave” (2014). “Slumdog Millionaire” won in 2009.

At the same time, however, Sunday could mark a symbolic shift in Hollywood: If Searchlight loses, it will likely be to Netflix, which could win its first Academy Award for best picture for “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Netflix has been chasing such a victory for years as the ultimate symbol of supremacy in Hollywood.

Searchlight has been rising to the challenge of streaming. “Nomadland,” from the Chinese-born filmmaker Chloé Zhao, was released in theaters and on Hulu, a Disney streaming service. But competing with Amazon, Apple and Netflix — and their seemingly bottomless wallets — for talent and material has become harder and harder. That has made the art film market more precarious for traditional studios like Searchlight, which will now be run by David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield, the current presidents.

“Every time my contract was up, to be candid, I always questioned whether I had the intestinal fortitude to fight through the next set of changes,” Mr. Gilula said. “Ultimately, pride and loyalty kept me going. And there has always been another fantastic film in the pipeline. Well, maybe after ‘Shape of Water,’ maybe after ‘Three Billboards.’ But this is it. With ‘Nomadland,’ which has shown that we haven’t lost our edge at all, adapting quickly to the pandemic, there is a great feeling of fulfillment.”

Mr. Gilula and Ms. Utley are leaving amid a broader brain drain at Disney. Robert A. Iger, executive chairman, is departing in December after 26 years at the company. Alan F. Horn, the top creative executive at Walt Disney Studios, has been edging toward retirement, as has Alan N. Braverman, Disney’s top lawyer. Jayne Parker, Disney’s powerful human resources chief, will step down in June after 33 years at the company.

“The people you mentioned have contributed mightily — myself excluded; I’m not talking about myself in this regard — to the success of the company, and in doing so have groomed people behind them who will take over the mantle,” Mr. Iger said. “I try to ease people’s concerns as much as possible. It’s certainly way too premature to express concern.”

Searchlight was one of the assets that Disney acquired from Rupert Murdoch in 2019. Mr. Iger, who orchestrated the deal, heaped praise on Ms. Utley and Mr. Gilula. “It takes a really deft hand to bring these smaller but extremely high-quality films to market, and they have Ph.D.’s in it,” he said.

Does their retirement signal a change in direction for Searchlight? The mini-studio, which has about 100 employees, is beloved by fans of grown-up cinema, especially as Hollywood has leaned harder toward all-audience franchise films.

“No, not at all,” Mr. Iger said. “We haven’t been particularly vocal about this, but we intend for Searchlight to play a big part in supplying content, not just for theaters but for our streaming platforms. We are going to invest more and more. Expect more output rather than less.”

Searchlight’s coming films include “Summer of Soul,” a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival from Ahmir Thompson, better known as Questlove; Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” a comedy-drama-romance; and Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley,” about a manipulative carnival worker. Searchlight also has six television shows on the way with stars and directors that include Keira Knightley, Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite”) and Darren Aronofsky.

All have worked with Searchlight before.

“When I started in the American film industry in ’93-’96, I heard often the word ‘family’ to describe film studios: ‘We’re a family here,’” Mr. del Toro said. “In my experience, what they must have meant was the Manson family. But not with Searchlight. It is a true family, one that nurtures you.”

Mr. del Toro, who wrote and directed “The Shape of Water,” continued: “I remember pitching them the story — it was a huge gamble! not something most studios would make! — and by the end I got weepy, and then they got weepy, and they said, ‘Go make your movie.’”

Ms. Zhao said she was impressed that Mr. Gilula and Ms. Utley met with her for an hour every week “for months” as Searchlight worked toward a pandemic-suited distribution and marketing plan for “Nomadland,” which stars Frances McDormand as a grief-stricken van dweller.

“I always hear horror stories about how, at some studios, once you finish your film you don’t know where it is going — what is happening with it,” Ms. Zhao said. “Not only was I informed every week at Searchlight, I was allowed to be a huge part of making all of the decisions.”

Mr. Gilula and Ms. Utley agreed to a theatrical release, even though it was a money-losing proposition because of the pandemic. “They don’t say, ‘We have a system that works for us so that is how you are going to work,’” Ms. Zhao said. “They really listened to us and trusted us.”

Searchlight was founded in 1994 by Thomas E. Rothman, who is now Sony’s movie chief. At the time, specialty films — auteur-minded cinematic trinkets — were raking in money at the box office. “The Full Monty,” released by Searchlight in 1997, cost $3.5 million to make and took in $258 million worldwide (or nearly $430 million in today’s money). Over the years, market conditions changed markedly, particularly in the late 2000s, when an economic downturn dried up production financing.

As competitors like Rogue Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Picturehouse and Miramax faded away, Ms. Utley and Mr. Gilula kept Searchlight vibrant. Her specialty has been marketing, scripts and casting. He is a distribution ace who co-founded the Landmark Theaters chain in 1974. “There has never been a spreadsheet that Steve didn’t love,” Ms. Utley said dryly.

Aside from exquisite cinematic taste, the two executives, who both hail from the Midwest, are the rarest of species in Hollywood: genuinely nice people. Neither craves the spotlight. They are widely known in the film industry for campaigning for awards with integrity.

“Hopefully, we have set an example,” Mr. Gilula said, “showing that you don’t have to be the other kind of person to be successful in this business.”

Both insisted that Disney’s takeover of Searchlight (called Fox Searchlight while owned by Mr. Murdoch) played no role in their decision to retire.

“We were frustrated at Fox because Fox just didn’t have a streaming strategy and was very slow to react to marketplace changes,” Ms. Utley said, adding, “I think the transition to Disney has gone really smoothly, which is one reason I have all the faith in the world about the future of Searchlight.”

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Goldman Sachs’s Top Image Maker, Jake Siewert, Will Leave

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Elliott may start a fight at GlaxoSmithKline. The big activist hedge fund has taken a multibillion-pound stake in the British medical and consumer products giant, DealBook has learned. The Financial Times, which first reported the news, said it came as other investors expressed worries that the company was underperforming, particularly in its drug pipeline.

Amazon published its founder’s latest letter to shareholders yesterday. It is likely the last such letter written by Jeff Bezos as C.E.O., since he plans to step down later this year and become executive chairman. In the letter, Mr. Bezos, the richest man in the world, laid out his view of Amazon’s impact during his 27-year tenure.

Mr. Bezos calculated the value he thinks Amazon creates for society. The total came to $301 billion last year, he said, with more than half going to customers (via time savings and the cost improvements of cloud computing), followed by employees (via compensation), third-party sellers (via profits from selling on Amazon) and finally shareholders (via the company’s net income). “Draw the box big around all of society, and you’ll find that invention is the root of all real value creation,” Mr. Bezos wrote. “And value created is best thought of as a metric for innovation.”

  • But “money doesn’t tell the whole story,” he wrote, and there is naturally a lot left out of such an expansive equation. If anything, using net income to measure Amazon’s value to shareholders understates its impact, since the company’s market cap grew by more than $700 billion last year. Elsewhere in the letter, Mr. Bezos noted that Amazon’s market value has grown by $1.6 trillion since its founding, which suggests that shareholders (Mr. Bezos among them) might rank higher — if not highest — in the accounting of who benefits most from Amazon’s operations.

Mr. Bezos said that Amazon’s goal is to become “Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work.” He disputed the characterization of Amazon warehouse employees as “being treated as robots” (the jobs have been criticized over workplace safety measures during the pandemic, algorithmic management and productivity quotas), and highlighted Amazon’s $15 minimum hourly wage, which one study suggested led to increased wages at other businesses nearby.

  • Mr. Bezos also addressed the recent union election at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., which Amazon won by a wide margin. “Does your Chair take comfort in the outcome of the recent union vote in Bessemer? No, he doesn’t,” Mr. Bezos wrote, adding that Amazon needs to “do a better job for our employees.”

The letter ended on a philosophical note. “We all know that distinctiveness — originality — is valuable,” Mr. Bezos wrote. “We are all taught to ‘be yourself.’ What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical — in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.”

— Jane Fraser, the C.E.O. of Citigroup, reporting a tripling of profit in its latest quarter.

Greenlight Capital’s quarterly report is out and the hedge fund’s founder, David Einhorn, has a lot to say.

He blames Chamath and Elon for the GameStop frenzy. “The real jet fuel on the GME squeeze came from Chamath Palihapitiya and Elon Musk, whose appearances on TV and Twitter, respectively, at a critical moment further destabilized the situation,” Mr. Einhorn wrote.

  • He questioned Mr. Palihapitiya’s intentions in joining the trading craze. “Mr. Palihapitiya controls SoFi, which competes with Robinhood, and left us with the impression that by destabilizing GME he could harm a competitor.” (Mr. Palihapitiya’s SPAC announced a deal to acquire SoFi in January, which Mr. Palihapitiya disclosed in his tweets about Robinhood.)

He’s not a fan of payment for order flow, which is how Robinhood makes money on free trading. It’s “just disguised commission,” Mr. Einhorn said.

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Gustavo Dudamel, Superstar Conductor, Is to Lead Paris Opera

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In a coup for the venerable Paris Opera, founded in 1669 by Louis XIV, the company announced on Friday that the superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel would be its next music director.

The musical leader of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009 and the rare classical artist to have crossed into pop-culture celebrity, Dudamel has led only a single production in Paris: “La Bohème,” in 2017. And while he has dipped his toe into the operatic repertory in Los Angeles, at the Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere, he has been largely known as a symphonic conductor.

But another big appointment will come as little surprise to those who have watched Dudamel rise steadily over the past 15 years. The new position is a milestone in the heady career of an artist who made his name as a wunderkind with orchestras in North and South America and who is now, at 40, taking the reins at one of Europe’s oldest opera companies. His tenure will start in August, for an initial term of six years, overlapping for much of that period with his position in Los Angeles, where his current contract runs through the 2025-26 season.

Dudamel — who was born in Venezuela in 1981 and trained there by El Sistema, the free government-subsidized program that teaches music to children, including in some of its poorest areas — occupies a unique position in music. He is sought by leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic. But he also appeared in a Super Bowl halftime show; was the classical icon Trollzart in the animated film “Trolls World Tour”; is conductor of the score for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film version of “West Side Story”; and inspired a messy-haired main character in the Amazon series “Mozart in the Jungle.” In 2019 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

His renown will surely be a shot in the arm for the Paris Opera, which like other arts organizations is warily eyeing the need to reintroduce itself to its core audience after the long closures of the pandemic, at the same time as it aims to capture new operagoers. Handsomely subsidized by the French government, the company — whose director, Alexander Neef, started last fall — has expanded its audience in recent years, but still faces the pressure of roiling debates about racial representation and the relevance of expensive-to-produce classical art forms.

It is no longer the norm — especially outside German-speaking countries — for opera music directors to start as pianists and singer coaches and work their way up through the company ranks, as Philippe Jordan, 46, Dudamel’s predecessor in Paris, did. While Dudamel lacks that preparation, he is not unknown in major opera houses. He made his debut at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 2006, when he was in his mid-20s, and at the Berlin State Opera the following year. He first appeared at the Vienna State Opera in 2016, and at the Met in 2018, with Verdi’s “Otello”; on Wednesday he finished a run of “Otello” in Barcelona.

In Los Angeles, he has contributed to the Philharmonic’s robust educational outreach, especially the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, a program inspired by El Sistema that was founded in 2007. He also continues to hold the post of music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, but after he criticized the government there in 2017, the country canceled his planned international tour with that ensemble.While he has not been able to perform with the Simón Bolívar since then, he still works with the ensemble remotely and has sometimes met outside Venezuela with groups of its players.

Dudamel’s appointment comes two months after the release of a report on discrimination and diversity at the Paris Opera, focusing on changes to the repertory, school admissions process and racial and ethnic makeup of its in-house ballet company.

Around the world, opera companies, too, have been called on to make their staffs, artistic lineups and repertories more representative. Alongside Ching-Lien Wu, the Paris Opera’s newly appointed (and first female) chorus master, Dudamel’s hiring is part of an effort to change the face of the company’s executive ranks and how it thinks about diversity and equity.

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CBS News Names 2 Outsiders to Succeed Its President

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Two years ago, CBS picked the ultimate insider to run its broadcast news division: Susan Zirinsky, whose decades-long tenure at the network stretched to the days of Walter Cronkite.

Now the network is turning to a pair of outsiders — one from the world of newspapers and digital publishing — to restore the fortunes of a news division that still trails its rivals at ABC and NBC.

CBS said on Thursday that Ms. Zirinsky would be succeeded by Neeraj Khemlani, a vice president at the publishing powerhouse Hearst and a relatively little-known figure in the TV news industry, and Wendy McMahon, a former ABC executive. The two will serve as presidents and co-heads of a CBS News division that will also include local stations owned by the network.

In the gossipy world of TV news, neither executive had been rumored to be a candidate for the top CBS role. Mr. Khemlani worked at CBS News from 1998 to 2006 as a producer at its “60 Minutes” franchise, but he left television to work at the news arm of the web giant Yahoo before going to Hearst in 2009.

Ms. McMahon was most recently at ABC, where she oversaw local stations and newsrooms owned by the network.

“This is an opportunity to create a news and information structure that positions CBS for the future,” George Cheeks, the chief executive of the CBS Entertainment group, said in a statement announcing the hires.

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ABC News names Kimberly Godwin as its new president.

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Kimberly Godwin, a veteran CBS News executive, was named the next president of ABC News on Wednesday, making her the first Black woman to lead a major broadcast network’s news division.

Ms. Godwin replaces James Goldston, who announced his departure from ABC in January. Her appointment was guided by Peter Rice, the chairman of general entertainment at The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC. She will begin in her job in early May.

Her promotion is just one of several changes in the world of broadcast news as the industry adjusts to the end of Donald J. Trump’s presidency and to shifting viewing habits among audiences who are showing signs of fatigue after years of devouring TV news.

CBS News is expected to announce in the coming days a successor for its own president, Susan Zirinsky, who is leaving to take on a producing role at ViacomCBS. CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, said he will depart the cable network by the end of the year, and Rashida Jones recently became the new president of MSNBC. When Ms. Jones took over MSNBC, she became the first Black woman to run one of the three major cable news channels.

Ms. Godwin, who most recently served as CBS’s executive vice president of news, joins ABC at a moment of strength for the network.

ABC’s “World News Tonight,” anchored by David Muir, is the top-rated evening newscast, averaging 9.4 million viewers for the season. It is the widest lead ABC has held over the “NBC Nightly News,” which averages 7.9 million viewers, since 1995, and the biggest lead over CBS’s evening newscast (5.8 million viewers) in at least 29 years.

Likewise, “Good Morning America” on ABC is still the No. 1 morning show in viewers, though it continues to trail the “Today” show on NBC among adults 25-54 years old, the adult age group most important to advertisers.

“Throughout Kim’s career in global news organizations and local newsrooms, she has distinguished herself as a fierce advocate for excellence, collaboration, inclusion and the vital role of accurate and transparent news reporting,” Mr. Rice, the Disney executive, said in a statement.

Ms. Godwin said, “I am honored to take on this stewardship and excited for what we will achieve together.”

News divisions at ABC and elsewhere are facing a drastically changed news cycle. Cable news networks have seen declining ratings in the last two months, and audiences for all of the morning shows and evening newscasts are down considerably from a year ago, when the onset of the pandemic spurred significant interest.

ABC News also grappled with internal tensions last year, after an investigation backed complaints about racially insensitive comments made by a longtime top executive, Barbara Fedida, who has since left the network.

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CBS News President Prepares Exit as Broadcast News Is in Flux

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The first woman to lead CBS News, Susan Zirinsky, is expected to announce that she is stepping down from the presidency of the network’s news division, possibly as soon as this week, a person with knowledge of the plan said on Tuesday.

Ms. Zirinsky, 69, was appointed in January 2019 to right a battered ship. At the time, CBS was confronting several key executive departures and unsavory revelations about its news division as a wider reckoning on workplace misconduct roiled the media industry.

CBS declined to comment. Ms. Zirinsky is expected to sign a production deal with the network’s parent company, ViacomCBS, to work on broadcast, cable and streaming programs, according to the person with knowledge of the details of her departure.

ABC News is also set to take on a new leader. Its previous president, James Goldston, announced his departure in January. ABC and its parent company, Disney, are in advanced discussions with Kimberly Godwin, a CBS News executive, about taking over the news division, two people with knowledge of the matter said. ABC declined to comment.

Several news organizations have undergone leadership changes as executives confront a drastically different news environment in the aftermath of Donald J. Trump’s presidency. Jeff Zucker announced in February that he will step down as CNN’s president by the end of the year. Rashida Jones recently replaced Phil Griffin as the head of MSNBC.

Ms. Zirinsky will stay on as CBS News president until her successor begins. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on her changing role.

A veteran of CBS for more than four decades, Ms. Zirinsky took over the news division as it was reeling from the firings of the company’s chief executive, Leslie Moonves, and of the top “60 Minutes” producer, Jeff Fager. She described her mission as “bringing this organization together both functionally and spiritually.”

Though she has long seen herself as a news producer, and not as a talent-wrangling executive, Ms. Zirinsky told The New York Times two years ago, “I felt at this moment in my life and my career this was the time to step up.”

In her two years on the job, she revamped “CBS This Morning” by signing the star anchor Gayle King to a new contract and pairing her with the co-anchors Anthony Mason and Tony Dokoupil. Ms. Zirinsky also moved the “CBS Evening News” to Washington, and announced Norah O’Donnell as its anchor.

Even with the moves, CBS remained stuck in third place in the morning news hours and at 6:30 p.m. In recent months, the two CBS shows have inched closer to the competition, and Ms. O’Donnell landed President Biden’s first postinaugural interview with a broadcast news division. News shows have lost viewers since the Trump presidency ended.

While Ms. Zirinsky has been busy making changes (she also appointed new top producers at “60 Minutes” and “CBS This Morning”), she has not been shy about voicing her frustrations with the job. She has frequently told confidants that she wanted to return to the part of broadcast journalism that was her first love: producing.

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Lee Delaney, C.E.O. of BJ’s Wholesale Club, dies unexpectedly

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Lee Delaney, the president and chief executive of BJ’s Wholesale Club, died unexpectedly on Thursday of “presumed natural causes,” according to a statement released Friday by the company. He was 49.

“We are shocked and profoundly saddened by the passing of Lee Delaney,” said Christopher J. Baldwin, the company’s executive chairman, said in a statement. “Lee was a brilliant and humble leader who cared deeply for his colleagues, his family and his community.”

Mr. Delaney joined BJ’s in 2016 as executive vice president and chief growth officer. He was promoted to president in 2019 and became chief executive last year. Before joining BJ’s, he was a partner in the Boston office of Bain & Company from 1996 to 2016. Mr. Delaney earned a master’s in business administration from Carnegie Mellon University, and attended the University of Massachusetts, where he pursued a double major in computer science and mathematics.

Mr. Delaney led the company through the unexpected changes in consumer demand spurred by the pandemic, with many customers stockpiling wholesale goods as they hunkered down at home. “2020 was a remarkable, transformative and challenging year that structurally changed our business for the better,” Mr. Delaney said in the company’s last quarterly earnings report.

The BJ’s board appointed Bob Eddy, the chief administrative and financial officer, to serve as the company’s interim chief executive. Mr. Eddy joined the company in 2007 and became the chief financial officer in 2011, adding the job of chief administrative officer in 2018.

“Bob partnered closely with Lee and has played an integral role in transforming and growing BJ’s Wholesale Club,” Mr. Baldwin said. He said that the company would announce decisions about its permanent executive leadership in a “reasonably short timeframe.”

BJ’s, based in Westborough, Mass., operates 221 clubs and 151 BJ’s Gas locations in 17 states.

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New York Times Names James Dao Metro Editor

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The New York Times on Monday named Jim Dao, a deputy editor on the national desk who has worked in a wide range of roles at the paper since 1992, as its new metropolitan editor.

“Jim will oversee the most consequential mayoral race in many years, and the epic story of the rebuilding of a city devastated by the pandemic,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, and Joseph Kahn, the managing editor, said in a note to the staff on Monday.

For Mr. Dao, 63, the new role is a homecoming. He joined The Times as a metro reporter nearly 30 years ago and was later the department’s deputy editor. He has also served as Albany bureau chief, congressional reporter and Pentagon correspondent.

In 2010 and 2011, he reported an eight-part, multimedia series about the yearlong deployment of an Army battalion in Afghanistan, “A Year at War,” which won an Emmy. He was also an executive producer of “Soldier Father Son,” a Netflix documentary based on the life of an Army sergeant profiled in his Afghanistan series.

the Op-Ed editor. In June, the section’s top editor, James Bennet, resigned amid internal and external criticism of a Times essay by Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, that called for troops to be deployed in response to civil unrest. Mr. Dao stepped down from his position, and The Times reassigned him, making him an editor on the national desk.

Mr. Dao takes over metro coverage from Clifford J. Levy, who led the department since 2018 until January, when The Times announced that he would spend some time advising the audio department as a deputy managing editor, one of the highest newsroom positions at the paper.

Mr. Dao steps into the new job as a number of candidates are promoting themselves in advance of the Nov. 2 vote that will determine the successor to Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City. He also takes the job at a time of flux within The Times. High-level editors have lately gotten promotions as Mr. Baquet, 64, approaches the paper’s traditional retirement age of 66 for top leaders.

Carolyn Ryan, who oversees recruitment and strategy at The Times, was promoted to deputy managing editor in October. Marc Lacey, the former national desk editor, joined the newsroom leadership team as the editor in charge of live coverage in December. Rebecca Blumenstein was promoted in February to a newly created role as a deputy editor working directly with the publisher, A. G. Sulzberger.

The Times has also promoted rising stars recently. Jia Lynn Yang, a deputy editor on the national desk, was appointed national editor in February. Ms. Yang, the author of the 2020 book “One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965,” coordinated the national department’s collaborations with the politics team for the paper’s coverage of the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential campaign.

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