Jill Abramson would rank among the most powerful women in the world today but it doesn’t show in the fragile maternal physique of this petite woman in her mid-fifties.

On this cool, serene Monday morning at the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki she is on the high table as one of the high profile speakers at the IPI Congress holding in this beautiful capital city of Finland. The panel is to speak on: “The International Financial Crisis and the Media.”

The congress handbook introduces her as the managing editor of the New York Times, a post she was appointed to in August 2003 after having been Washington, D.C. bureau chief: “As bureau chief, a job she assumed in December 2000, she directed the work of the newspaper’s 60-member Washington bureau. She joined the New York Times in September 1997 and became Washington editor in 1999. Previously she worked at The Wall Street Journal from 1988-97. While there, she served as deputy bureau chief in its Washington bureau and investigative reporter, covering money and politics. From 1986-88, she was editor-in-chief of Legal Times, a weekly newspaper in Washington, D.C. Jill Abramson won the National Press Club award for national correspondence in 1992 for her coverage of money and politics.”

What the brochure didn’t include was the fact that Jill Abramson nearly lost her life when she was hit by a truck close to her newspaper office in New York on May 8, 2007 and she suffered a broken femur and a fractured hip that kept her in hospital. After an intensive course of physical therapy, she had to “re-learn to walk.” She later sued the truck driver and the company he worked for, for causing her “severe and serious personal injuries to mind and body” and “great physical pain and mental anguish.”

From her hospital bed, she still kept “a sharp eye” on her paper and sent out series of e-mails one of which read: “The Times is my second family and second home and I am already very homesick.”
Shortly after the panel discussion, we sat down this media Queen of New York for an interview on her life as the editor of America’s most influential quality newspaper. Excerpts:

Why did you go into journalism?
Why? Because I am a very curious and nosy person. I like to ask questions. I am fascinated by powerful institutions. And I thought there could be no more interesting career than one that gave you a passport to examine and hold powerful institutions accountable.

So, where did you start from?
I studied at Harvard. And pretty much right after college, I started writing for one of the student newspapers at Harvard and then after I graduated I continued writing and reporting. I have worked for magazines, I worked briefly in the election unit of NBC News. So, I had a brief sojourn in broadcasting but mainly my career has been spent at two of the best newspapers in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

What was it like working for the wall street journal?
I was based in their Washington bureau and at the time, the Journal took investigative reporting seriously and they gave you a lot of time to report and research articles, particularly the ones that were for the front page. I got some fabulous training there. About how to read financial documents and how to get people who might not normally want to talk to reporters to explain processes and how institutions work. To me, it was a very formative period of my career when I worked there.

What is the portrait of a financial journalist?
Someone who understands both numbers and the motivation for people, and can write in such a way that it doesn’t make them bored, that brings characters to life and can weave a narrative out of complicated topics.

What was strategic about being in Washington bureau?
The Washington bureau of many newspapers and of the TV networks is one of the main hubs of the news. It covers the government, it covers all the lobbyists that come to work in Washington because the government is there. It’s a very competitive landscape. I was privileged to be the Washington Bureau Chief of The New York Times. I was the first woman to have that job. And really, it was a privilege for me to lead a staff of the best journalists in Washington.

What’s the challenge of a woman being a bureau chief?
People always ask me that question and for me I am not aware that it’s been that big challenge to me. In some way, it’s been an advantage. The Times was changing at a point my career was developing and I think there were not that many women in management at either The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times and both places seemed eager to make use of me. I had been an editor very early in my career and I was used to managing a staff and helping other reporters get on to good stories and then sharpening their skills.

Did you have to break a glass ceiling to get to the top as a woman?
Yes, there were some women in the top management of The New York Times before me but I think I really didn’t have to break a ceiling because like we have a woman CEO named Janet Robinson who has been supportive of my career and the head of our editorial page was Gail Collins, she was the first woman to get that job. So, there were other women breaking the barriers before me. I owe a lot to them.

Why did you leave wall street journal for New York Times?
Because business reporting which I am interested in isn’t the sole arena in which I wanted to report. I love cultural coverage, I am very involved in everything at the Times, like fashion coverage, the coverage of films and theatre and music, sports interest me. The New York Times in a very excellent, rigorous way covered all of these different areas and that appealed to me. It was a bigger buffet.

How great is the New York Times as a newspaper?
It’s just fantastic. It is hard to convey. It is filled with the most interesting people you could imagine meeting in your life. They are excellent in their fields. As an example of just how interesting my colleagues are, there is a young man who is a graphic designer and who is also on the Olympics skating team. The New York Times is full of people like that. It’s really a wonderful place to work.

What does a managing editor do?
A little bit of everything. A managing editor is a Jack of all trades. I am involved in all aspects of our daily news report. I help pick the stories for the front page and the photographs for the front page every day. Some days it’s doing a little bit of hand-holding with colleagues who may be feeling stressed out because they are worried about their jobs or they are worried that the stories that they are working on isn’t panning out and then it’s kind of talking them to do that process. More of my time is spent on the business challenges that we face, because the people on the news side of the Times are very invested in trying to figure out a successful strategy that would ensure the future of the Times.

Does the job involve a combination of editorial and business functions?
It’s mostly editorial but of late, the news side colleagues are working with our business side, with some of our leaders on some of the really big issues like whether we should charge for news on the Internet and that type of thing.

How are you dealing with that problem?
We are studying all the different models and figuring out which approach fits best with our particular audience. We are making money on the Internet because we have over 20 million readers on the web and are a great audience for advertisers. So, we do make money on advertising. And that was growing very robustly until the financial crisis. We are hoping growth will rebound.

Is it likely to be a model that would compete with copy sales?
It’s possible. We haven’t figured exactly which model we are going to adopt but it’s possible that like the print product (which) has a circulation stream of revenue and an advertising stream that we may try to develop something that is similar to that circulation stream.

What makes a good story?
What makes a good story? Almost anything, I think, makes a good story. A good story has people and some kind of struggle for dominance or a mystery. To me, my juices get going when someone says: “You would never find out how this happened.” That’s a great story. It’s about finding out the story behind the story. To me, the news of what happened, when, where, is less interesting to me than that story behind the story.

So, how do you define news?
There is no single definition of news. The mission of journalism is clear to me, which is to hold the powerful institutions of our society into account. That’s the mission. And there are infinite number of stories that fall under that mission.

What is quality news?
Quality news is rigorously reporting, rigorously analysed, beautifully and elegantly written and displayed to its full potential on all platforms.

What are the keys to success in journalism?
The key to success in journalism is to be fair and rigorous and to not making your mind up, like when you are beginning to report on a story. And to be open to surprise and to be interested in thrills and to report the thrills.

How did the Jason Blair scandal affect New York Times?
Oh, the Jason Blair. It affected us greatly. It cost the two top editors their jobs and it tarnished the reputation of the newspaper for a time, but it has recovered and I think it has recovered beautifully.

How do you define success?
Success is: loving what you do and I love every manner of the job that I have and I love being a journalist. That to me is success.