Today in End of An Era news, agency PRs everywhere will no longer be pitching Stuart Elliott for coverage in The New York Times. As Elliott announced on his Facebook page this morning (and Capital New York reported), he has chosen to take early retirement via one of 100 staff buyouts after working at the paper since 1991.
In his words:
Elliott has, of course, covered everything from campaigns to M&A in his two-plus decades with the NYT.
He also had a closer relationship with agency reps than most; recently, he even prompted Geico to release a “Geico does not want to comment on the AgencySpy post” comment via The Martin Agency.
There’s no word so far on who might replace Elliott as the go-to ad reporter at the paper of record. Freelancer Andrew Adam Newman has been covering campaigns for some time, but Elliott does not have an obvious successor and the pub has given no hints about future plans for its advertising section.
We had the good fortune to meet Elliott at an Ogilvy event some time ago, and he was nothing if not the consummate professional. We wish him the best and we’ll make sure to post on subsequent news about the NYT’s ad column.