Jill Abramson will be the first female executive editor of the New York Times.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- For the first time in its 160-year history, a woman will be running The New York Times, one of the nation's most influential newspapers.
Jill Abramson was named the Times' executive editor Thursday, succeeding Bill Keller in an abrupt reshuffling of the paper's masthead. Keller has led the paper for the past eight years, and will now move to writing for the New York Times Magazine and the paper's new Sunday Review opinion section.
Abramson is currently the managing editor of the Times (NYT), and was previously the paper's Washington bureau chief.
When she steps into her new role -- which is set to be in September -- she will inherit a paper that is trying to harness a new revenue stream, having erected a paywall for its website earlier this year.
"A bet on the future" is how Abramson described the plan to CNN at the time of its launch -- a gamble to raise revenue so the organization can maintain the breadth and depth of its news coverage.
The paywall restricts content for users who view more than twenty articles per month without a digital subscription. While business papers such as The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have long charged for online content, the Times is the largest general interest paper to end free, unlimited access to its website.
"I believe strongly that the quality of our journalism is at such a level that people should be willing to pay to read it," Abramson said. "I don't know if there are that many other general interest newspapers that are offering that same kind of highest-quality journalism, so I'm not sure that everyone else is going to dive into this pond."
Abramson has already chosen Dean Baquet, the current Washington bureau chief, to replace her as managing editor. A New York native -- she reportedly has a tattoo of a New York City subway token on her shoulder -- Abramson described her new position as a "dream job."
"In my house growing up, the Times substituted for religion," she told the Times on Thursday. "If the Times said it, it was the absolute truth."
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the Times, said in a statement that Keller instigated the change.
"Bill came to me several weeks ago and told me that he felt the time had come for him to step down from the role of executive editor," Sulzberger said.
The Times heralded the changing of the guard in a series of posts on its official Twitter account Thursday, including photos that showed Sulzberger, Keller and Abramson in the paper's newsroom.
One reporter for the paper, Jennifer Preston, posted on Twitter that when Keller addressed the newsroom, he was, as always, an "absolute gentleman." As for Abramson, Preston said she is "fearless."
--CNN senior correspondent Allan Chernoff contributed to this report. 
