Ex-Times Editor to Run CNN’s Business News

After searching for several months, Cable News Network on Wednesday chose a new president to run its business news unit and oversee its financial news network, CNNfn, naming Shelby Coffey III, the No. 2 executive at ABC News and a former editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Coffey, whose title will be president of CNN Business News and CNNfn, replaces Lou Dobbs, who had also been anchor of CNN’s flagship financial program, “Moneyline.” Dobbs quit in June to run a Web site devoted to outer space.

While business news is the most lucrative programming at CNN and is playing an increasingly large role there, the sister CNNfn cable network has struggled behind NBC’s financial network CNBC, which has five times the cable home distribution. Among Coffey’s mandates will be to take CNNfn around the world.

At CNN, Coffey will be reunited with Tom Johnson, chairman of the CNN News Group and former publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Johnson named Coffey to the editor’s post, which he held from 1989 to 1997.

CNN had offered the job to another former Los Angeles Times staffer, Paul Steiger, but he decided to remain as managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.

CNN has recently more than doubled its financial programming to 5 1/2 hours per day. But under Dobbs, relations between the business news unit and the network were frayed, partly due to personality clashes. Johnson said Coffey’s appointment will mean a “new era of teamwork and cooperation.”

Coffey, 53, said, “One of the signal accomplishments of American journalism in recent decades has been to expand the definitions of business coverage. That’s something I want to continue to do.” He will be based in New York and will oversee a $50-million annual budget.

Coffey has been executive vice president of ABC News since June 1998, where he oversaw editorial standards and practices, online activities and cable development.