A PINCH OF CHANGE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: Joe Kahn to succeed Dean Baquet as the Times’ executive editor.

In recent months, Kahn had emerged as the overwhelming favorite for the top job at the Times, though Baquet had likely put his succession in motion when he elevated him to the role of managing editor, his second-in-command, in September 2016. “I very much think that Joe should be a candidate to succeed me,” Baquet said at the time.

Kahn, who joined the Times in 1998 after stints at the Wall Street Journal and Dallas Morning News, has the kind of résumé that has traditionally lined the path to masthead jobs at the paper. He covered international economics and trade from the Times’s Washington bureau and Wall Street from the business desk in the city before serving as Beijing bureau chief and then rising through the ranks of management on the foreign staff.

In an internal note to Times staff, publisher A.G. Sulzberger called Kahn “a brilliant journalist and a brave and principled leader,” and acknowledged that few would be surprised by his appointment. “Dean told me recently that he believed that Joe was more prepared than any editor he’s ever seen to take over a global newsroom that’s grown in size, complexity and ambition,” he wrote.

I’m curious to see if Kahn will keep his young uber-woke Democratic Party operatives with bylines under control better than the hapless Baquet could.

UPDATE: Or not. Cringe: Stop what you’re doing and check out this photo of the new executive editor of the NYT that he took on purpose.

(Updated and bumped.)