Timesman Len Apcar has been named deputy editor of Times Co.'s International Herald Tribune Asia.

The announcement was made to the Times' staff yesterday:

To: [New York Times newsroom] Sent: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 12:21:01 -0400 Subject: TO THE STAFF

It will not surprise you to hear that Asia is a vital part of our future.

Journalistically, the rise of Asia represents one of the most important stories of our age. For confirmation, look no further than the Pulitzer Joe Kahn and Jim Yardley won this year for their examination of the Chinese justice system.

Asia is the fastest growing part of The IHT's circulation and a rich source of new audiences for IHT.com and NYTimes.com. Growth in our Asian readership is important to us as journalists and it is important to our business. It is essential that we continue to adapt our organization to this reality.

The full memo, via Romenesko:

To: [New York Times newsroom]
Sent: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 12:21:01 -0400
Subject: TO THE STAFF

It will not surprise you to hear that Asia is a vital part of our future.

Journalistically, the rise of Asia represents one of the most important stories of our age. For confirmation, look no further than the Pulitzer Joe Kahn and Jim Yardley won this year for their examination of the Chinese justice system.

Asia is the fastest growing part of The IHT's circulation and a rich source of new audiences for IHT.com and NYTimes.com. Growth in our Asian readership is important to us as journalists and it is important to our business. It is essential that we continue to adapt our organization to this reality.

We are very pleased to announce that Len Apcar will become The IHT's Deputy Managing Editor for Asia, with important responsibilities for all of the company's journalistic interests in Asia.

He will, first, assume the job so well launched by Nick Stout of leading the Asian edition of The IHT, continuing to extend the Trib's global reach by serving the needs of our Asian-based audience. Under Nick, circulation has grown to 91,000 copies, making the IHT Asia's largest English language newspaper, ahead of both The Wall Street Journal and The FT. Len will take us even further as we continue to expand and improve the paper to represent the best of The IHT and The Times.

At the same time, Len's duties will include working closely with Times editors in New York, and correspondents in the field to make our Hong Kong newsroom a forward base that serves both newspapers and both Web sites.

The New York Times, with its two newspapers and two Web sites, is an increasingly complicated news organization operating 24 hours a day around the globe. At any hour of the day, we are awake and competing with other news organizations, even when editors in New York and Paris are asleep.

Len will use our base in Hong Kong to improve communication and coordination, and to inspire Times-quality journalism for our audience
wherever they may come to us.

By having an editor with Len's credentials at his post six hours ahead of Paris and 12 hours ahead of New York, we assure that correspondents will have a trust editor with whom they can talk over stories and set the day's priorities, hours earlier than at present. We will continue to rely above all on the correspondents' judgment, but by clarifying the news agenda earlier in the day we give everyone -- the correspondents, the editors of the Trib, and the editors at the websites -- a clearer picture of the coverage they will have available.

Len will report to Mike and Alison at the Trib, and to Susan Chira or Larry Ingrassia on matters related to the foreign or business reports of The Times. He will also work closely with Jon Landman and the Continuous News Desk in our efforts to move toward more vibrant -- and more truly "continuous" -- on-line coverage.

It's hard to imagine a journalist better prepared for this role than Len. He has been an enterprise and assignments editor on both foreign and business and, of course, for the last four years has been editor in chief of NYTimes.com.

As enterprise editor on foreign he nurtured some of our finest jounalism and as chief of correspondents in BizDay he was a guiding hand for more than a dozen correspondents at home and abroad. At NYTimes.com, he oversaw the invention of some of our newest forms of journalism. On his watch, the site has won just about every Web journalism award, sometimes three times. His new job will call on all his old journalism and new media skills.

He will arrive in Hong Kong next month and Nick, as previously announced, will then return to Paris to oversee the integration of the IHT's print and Web news operations.

Bill and Mike