Ex-Times Editor Bill Keller to Lead New Nonprofit Newsroom

Bill Keller, The New York Times executive editor from 2003 to 2011 and a regular op-ed columnist since then, is leaving the newspaper to take the helm at a nonprofit journalism start-up focused on criminal-justice issues, the Times writes.

The 30-year Times veteran, who won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting as a Moscow correspondent, will depart in March to become editor in chief of The Marshall Project. The online newsroom, scheduled to launch in the second quarter of the year, was founded by Neil Barsky, a former finance reporter and money manager.

The project is modeled on nonprofit newsrooms such as ProPublica and plans to raise money from foundations and individual donors. Mr. Keller called his move “a chance to build something from scratch, which I’ve never done before, and to use all the tools that digital technology offers journalists in terms of ways to investigate and to present on a subject that really matters personally.”