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The New York Times has been called a lot of things in the 160 years of its existence, but unpredictable, rash, and confusing are rarely among them. But those were all adjectives swimming around Twitter after it was announced that chief executive Janet Robinson had been asked to resign. The former school teacher and 28-year veteran of The Times Janet Robinson still has two weeks on the job, so the departure seems abrupt at best. Robinson sounded grateful and polite in her goodbye note (a $4.5 million one-year consulting agreement comes with her exit) save her use of the phrase "mixed emotions," as did her boss Arthur J. Sulzberger, the chairman of The New York Times Company. But there was no fooling the gawking media types on Twitter. "Sulzberger fired Robinson," according to The New York Times' own report (although not until the ninth paragraph), as Financial Times columnist John Gapper tweeted. The graf in the paper of record's full coverage of the event does sound awfully suspicious:

Last Friday, Mr. Sulzberger called a meeting with Ms. Robinson on the 15th floor of the company’s Manhattan headquarters. He raised the issue of installing a different type of leadership at the company, according to people familiar with the meeting who declined to be identified discussing confidential company business.

And, predictably, the following sentence reads, "Both Ms. Robinson and Mr. Sulzberger declined to comment." So the rumors swirled, including at The Times' biggest rival, The Wall Street Journal, which included this paragraph suggesting the Sulzberger family which controls The Times pushed Robinson out:

The company's struggles during the worst of the downturn had prompted some members of the Sulzberger family to question whether Ms. Robinson was the right person to guide the company in a digital world, according to people briefed on the family's thinking.

To sum up and paraphrase, the scores of reactions we read to the news of Sulzberger's confusing move all converged on a few of points.

Janet Robinson did a fine job, but it was time for a change. As the vignette of last Friday's mysterious meeting of higher ups suggests, the company's board was probably eager to stir the pot. This is curious from the company we're more accustomed to letting things just simmer but not necessarily unconscionable. Forbes's media writer Jeff Bercovici remembers having lunch with The Times Company's now former CEO just three months ago. "Robinson certainly didn’t give the vibe of a person who was getting ready to trade the challenges of running the world’s most important newspaper for a life of mid-morning tee times," he writes. Bercovici is also careful to explain how "since that lunch, the economic situation for The Times (and the newspaper industry as a whole) has deteriorated somewhat, leading to a third-quarter drop in ad revenue of 8.8 percent." Is that Robinson's fault? Who knows, but the company's continued struggle to keep up with the fast-moving new media industry is certainly cause for concern.