​New Role for Amber Williams

Over the past two years, editors all around The Times have gotten to know Amber Williams as one of the big brains on the News Desk, someone who can read thousands of words a day and help improve a tricky lede or spot a subtle framing problem.

What colleagues might not know is that before joining The Times, Amber began her career on the science beat. After majoring in biology at Boston College, where she dissected shrimp in a lab researching endocrine-disrupting chemicals, she studied science journalism at New York University, interned at Audubon and Wired and then worked as an editor at Popular Science and Scientific American.

So I'm thrilled that the stars have aligned - to invoke a not very scientific celestial metaphor - for Amber to join the editorial corps of the Science desk.

When she first came to The Times, it was to lead the print reinvention of A2 and A3, but soon she became the editor of the pioneering Kids section, where she always made sure to feature a Science page in every issue. One spread she's particularly proud of was about black holes. If you think your assignment is hard, she says, just try "explaining spacetime and gravity to 10-year-olds in 35 words."

While on the News Desk, Amber worked on two special initiatives that I'm hoping will pay dividends for her future work on Science. First, she supported Marc Lacey and Sam Dolnick on their "clear and concise writing" initiative, giving workshops for each desk to focus on how to make our news copy (and especially our ledes) as reader-friendly as possible. Second, she sat on the committee that is spearheading the new Scoop planning tool, which we all need to get a little (OK, a lot) better at.

Michael Slackman says: "Amber is everything you want in an editor. She's smart, collegial, an excellent reader, a great listener, well-organized and, of course, terrific with copy. We will seriously miss her on the News Desk, but I'm thrilled she will have the chance to work with the best science journalism team in the business."

Please join me in welcoming Amber to the desk!

- Bill