About.com Gets New Chief Executive

The New York Times Company’s About Group, which publishes the advice and informational Web site About.com, has appointed a new chief executive.

Darline Jean, formerly About’s chief financial officer, will take over the top position on Sept. 1, the company said Tuesday. The appointment was part of a broader management shuffle at the company in which new heads for the sales and finance divisions were also named.

About has been struggling with declining revenue and Web traffic since Google changed both the way it directs traffic to informational sites like About.com and the way it allows those sites to collect revenue from ads that users click on. In the second quarter, About’s revenues dropped 17.3 percent to $27.8 million.

About.com’s former chief executive, Cella Irvine, left in May. Since then, it has been looking for a successor to help guide it out of a rough patch.

“These appointments provide a solid foundation and expert leadership for the About Group moving forward,” said Janet L. Robinson, chief executive of the Times Company. “Darline’s experience and knowledge of the About Group makes her well suited to continue overseeing the strategic investments being made across the business unit and its response to some of the shifts taking place in the search universe.”

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Doctoroff Named Chief Executive of Bloomberg L.P.

Daniel L. Doctoroff, a former deputy to Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York who became president of Bloomberg L.P. three and a half years ago, was promoted on Tuesday to be the company’s chief executive.

Oscar Hidalgo for The New York TimesDaniel L. Doctoroff, right, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2007.

The promotion will shift day-to-day responsibility for all of Bloomberg L.P. to Mr. Doctoroff from Peter T. Grauer, the longtime chairman of the sprawling financial and media company founded by Mr. Bloomberg 30 years ago. Mr. Doctoroff will continue to report to Mr. Grauer, who will remain chairman.

The shift comes at a time when the closely held Bloomberg L.P., known for its financial terminals, is expanding its terrain — with the magazine Bloomberg Businessweek, the Washington data service Bloomberg Government and the editorial-writing outfit Bloomberg View being three much-talked-about examples.

“In addition to our very successful core businesses, the Bloomberg terminal and Bloomberg News, we have started eight new businesses just in the past few years,” Mr. Grauer said in a statement. “Dan is perfectly suited to manage our increasingly diversified business model.”

Employees were notified Tuesday morning in an internal e-mail memorandum that the promotion would be effective Aug. 1.

Also Tuesday, Thomas F. Secunda, the manager of Bloomberg’s biggest unit, financial products, was named a vice chairman of the company. Mr. Secunda was one of the founding partners of Bloomberg L.P. in 1981.

Bloomberg has not had a chief executive since mid-2008, when Lex Fenwick was moved to a business incubator called Bloomberg Ventures, where he remains. At that time Mr. Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg since 2001, took on day-to-day oversight of many of the company’s divisions, with Mr. Doctoroff, who had joined the company as its president six months earlier, as his deputy.

As president, Mr. Doctoroff was responsible for the financial products, data products, news, multimedia, operations and ventures units of Bloomberg. As chief executive and president, he will add to his portfolio the finance and administration, marketing, corporate communications and professional development units.

The move will make Mr. Grauer a more traditional chairman. According to the internal memo written by the two men, he will focus on “ensuring that we are building and maintaining high-level relationships with customers and other external stakeholders, including senior government officials; enhancing our legal, compliance and security functions; driving our world-class sustainability and philanthropy programs; and building our unique culture through mentoring and new leadership and career development programs.”

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