Times Editorial Page Editor Steps Down

Gail Collins, the first woman to run the editorial page of The New York Times, is stepping down Jan. 1 and will be succeeded by Andrew Rosenthal, the deputy editor of the page. Ms. Collins, 60, is taking a leave of absence from the paper to write a book and is to return in July as a columnist on The Times’s Op-Ed page.

The Times editorial page has long been regarded as one of the most liberal within the mainstream media, and the change at the top is expected to continue that outlook.

Ms. Collins, who was appointed editor of the page in 2001, “has seen us through the horror of 9/11, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a time of great political turmoil,” Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the paper’s publisher, said in a statement. She also oversaw a physical expansion from two pages to three on Sundays and instituted editorials for the Sunday paper’s regional sections covering New York City and its suburbs.

“As much as I will miss her leadership, I’m thrilled she will be returning to our Op-Ed pages as a columnist,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “We have missed her voice there.”

Mr. Rosenthal, 50, joined The Times in 1987 and was named deputy editorial page editor in 2003. He has served as the paper’s assistant managing editor, foreign editor and acting national editor, and as a reporter and editor in the Washington bureau.

Mr. Sulzberger called Mr. Rosenthal “a born editorial writer,” saying he had written some of the paper’s “most powerful and insightful editorials.” Mr. Rosenthal’s editorials have been highly critical of the Bush administration, particularly regarding intelligence and civil liberties issues, military commissions and the war in Iraq.

Mr. Rosenthal said in an interview that the editorial page faced several challenges, particularly as the newspaper shrinks its physical size, a change planned for 2008. The reduction could affect the number, length and type size of the editorials as well as letters to the editor.

“We’re trying to figure out a way to do all the things we’re doing now but in less space,” he said. He added that he was “determined not to reduce the length of the columns” by the Op-Ed writers.

Mr. Rosenthal, the son of the late A.M. Rosenthal, a former executive editor of The Times, graduated in 1978 from the University of Denver, where he worked as a sports stringer for The Associated Press and a part-time police reporter for The Rocky Mountain News. He later became Moscow bureau chief for The A.P. before joining The Times in Washington.

Ms. Collins, a former columnist at New York Newsday and The New York Daily News, joined The Times as a columnist in 1995. She has a degree in journalism from Marquette University and a master’s degree in government from the University of Massachusetts. She is the author of three books and is working on one about American women since 1960.