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| Michael Tomasky |
Michael Tomasky, who was the first US editor of The Guardian as well as editor of The American Prospect, is taking the top editorial position at The New Republic, effective April 19. Tomsky is currently a columnist and editor at The Daily Beast and editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, a quarterly journal based in Washington, DC. TNR also plans to centralize its editorial operations in Washington, D.C., where the publication was based until 2012, while retaining a presence in New York. Tomasky says he plans to expand coverage of policy-making and the politics that drive it. He replaces Chris Lehmann, who took the editor’s job in 2019. Lehmann will stay at the publication as editor at large.
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Medium CEO Evan Williams said in an email to staff that the company is “making some changes to our editorial strategy and leadership and giving a voluntary exit option to employees who would like to take a different path.” The move is part of a decision by the platform to scale back its online magazines, which it added to the selection of independent writers who publish on it in 2019. Siobhan O’Connor, who has been vice president for editorial at the platform since 2018, will exit. Jermaine Hall, who is editor of Medium’s LEVEL magazine, and Scott Lamb, who is currently VP, publisher growth & strategy, will jointly lead the platform’s content organization. Williams said the audience for its online magazines has not been growing at a rate that would justify their continued operation. However, he noted the success of Ampify, a program that helps writers polish the work they post to the site. Less than a month ago, a union drive at Medium failed.
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| Daniel Alvarez |
Quartz names Daniel Alvarez chief product officer, effective April 12. Alvarez joins Quartz from NBC Universal, where he was VP of product and design for local NBC and Telemundo TV stations. Prior to NBC, he was the head of product and design at HuffPost. At Quartz, he will be responsible for all product development as well as overseeing the engineering, design, product management, and analytics teams. “Daniel is a seasoned product leader, and we’re excited to welcome him to Quartz,” said Quartz co-founder and CEO Zach Seward. “His bold and creative approach to editorial products will help continue to push Quartz forward in developing new and better ways to serve readers.”
Symbolic.ai forms a partnership with News Corp to begin using the company’s AI-native publisher platform in the newsrooms of News Corp publications to augment research, writing and publishing... Mediaite launches a newsletter that promises to give readers a summary of—media newsletters... The Fund for American Studies launches the Journalism Excellence Fellowship, a program that will provide promising young journalists the opportunity to work alongside top writers, reporters, and media professionals.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which has roots going back to 1786, is going out of business, the paper’s owners, Block Communications, announced on Jan. 7... GQ editor Will Welch is stepping down to take on a new Paris-based role with the musician Pharrell, who is also men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton... Semafor says it has raised $30 million on a $330 million valuation, following its first profitable year. 
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach an agreement that will make a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars available for use by Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform... CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has moved Tony Dokoupil, a co-host at “CBS Mornings” since 2019, into the anchor’s chair for the “CBS Evening News,” following the departure of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois... USA Today editor-in-chief Caren Bohan has left the paper.
Michael Kaminer, who was responsible for the Observer’s “Power List” for the past 13 years, has cut ties with the publication... The New York Times Company continues the march toward its goal of 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027... The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is providing more than $6 million in funding to eight organizations working to address the challenges local news and information environments face along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Conservative outlets Fox News, Newsmax and the Daily Caller are holding back from signing Pete Hegseth’s edict restricting press access in the Pentagon... CBS News sees the first executive departure of the Bari Weiss era as head of standards and practices Claudia Milne exits... Indiana University shuts down the print version of The Indiana Daily Student.
