Washington Post Executive Editor to retire

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Washington Post Co's Leonard Downie, Jr. will retire after 17 years as the top editor at the newspaper, as the paper grapples with preserving its legacy while courting new readers online.

No successor has been named, the company said on Monday. A company spokeswoman declined further comment on when the paper expected to name a new editor. Downie was not immediately reachable.

Downie will leave the executive editor post at the paper in the autumn of this year in a widely expected move, ending a 44-year career at the paper renown for its coverage of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of former U.S. President Richard Nixon.

Downie, 66, joined the paper as a summer intern in 1964 and rose up the ranks, first as an investigative reporter in Washington and later as a Metro news and National editor.

Since taking over the top editorial post in 1991, the Post has won 25 Pulitzer Prizes, six of them in 2008.

Under his leadership the paper has sought to tie its Internet and newspaper operations closer together. Its website, launched more than a decade ago, was considered a bellwether among online publishers because of its early success at attracting online readers. But it had been operated separately from its print operations.

Meanwhile, much like the rest of the newspaper industry, the paper has had to stave off a sharp decline in print advertising dollars as more marketers and readers migrate onto the Internet.

The austere economic environment has led the paper to offer three rounds of buyouts since 2003. About 230 employees are estimated to have accepted the buyout offer this year, a spokeswoman said.

(Reporting by Kenneth Li and Robert MacMillan; Editing by Andre Grenon)