The track record for outsiders isn’t good, but I suppose it beats staying at the Times and watching it fold…

The Awl blog has reported that New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis is leaving after 12 years to become senior vice president of marketing and communications at Standard & Poor’s.

We presume she’s looked at the rating company’s track record when filling positions like this before her with other outsiders with no experience or understanding of the ratings business.

Hasn’t really worked all that well.

The company has a poor record of considering internal candidates, and a worse record of appointing outsiders who are often clueless about the ratings business and don’t last very long at all.

S&P’s current marketing and communications area was constituted in 1991 under Glenn Goldberg, a former press secretary to Elizabeth Holtzman when she was in Congress. Glenn worked for Liz in the Brooklyn DA’s office and later as her spokesperson when she was City Controller.

After a string of rapid promotions leading to a managing director title, Glenn was preparing to move uptown to be a senior vice president of S&P’s parent McGraw-Hill, and reached outside the company -- and over several internal staffers -- to hire Michael Dorfsman, former executive director of the Connecticut cable TV trade association. Michael was director of communications for about two years. Gone.

Then – again with internal staffers not in the running -- they hired Leah Johnson, whose husband had ties to New York State comptroller Carl McCall, as director of communications. 

Less than a month after being promoted to a vice president title, Johnson bolted for the more lucrative global media relations VP job at Citibank working for Sandy Weill and later for Chuck Prince.

The search to replace Johnson was done by Heymann Associates, but Leo O’Neill, S&P’s president at the time, circumvented the search process that SVP of Marketing & Communications Joan Lewis (also long gone) had put in place. O’Neill blindsided Lewis by offering Johnson’s job to outsider Cynthia Jaye from the biomedical testing industry before any other candidates got a chance to interview with him for the position. Jaye, who had no financial markets experience, left after less than a year.

In 2006, Chris Atkins was recruited as VP of public relations from Ogilvy PR where he was managing director of the global corporate practice.

No word on what his reporting relationship with Mathis will be.