Ben Smith
Ben Smith

New York Times media columnist Ben Smith is exiting the paper to serve as editor-in-chief for a news organization being started by Justin Smith, who is leaving his position as chief executive of Bloomberg Media. In a tweet, Justin Smith said that the proposed platform would be “a new kind of global news media company that serves unbiased journalism to a truly global audience.” Before coming to the Times in 2020, Ben Smith was editor-in-chief at Buzzfeed News and he previously wrote for Politico. Justin Smith joined Bloomberg in 2013 after serving as president of Atlantic Consumer Media. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the venture, with the working title “Project Coda,” is expected to feature platforms including digital publishing, email newsletters, podcasts and digital video.

John Lee
John Lee

NBC Universal launches NBCUnified, a first-party identity platform that it says will let advertisers track and monitor consumer relationships without cookies or device IDs. The platform will combine data from streaming viewership, newsletter subscriptions, theme park visits and ecommerce purchases to create person-level IDs and household IDs. That information can then be matched up with first-party data from marketers and third-party data from licensed providers. “The demand for advanced audiences to be utilized is growing at an incredible pace, so we are trying to stay ahead of that,” NBCUniversal Adversiting & Partnerships chief data officer John Lee told Television News Daily.

Matt Abramovitz
Matt Abramovitz

New England Public Media hires Matt Abramovitz as president, effective Feb. 1. Abramovitz is currently vice president of programming for New York classical music station WQXR, a part of New York Public Radio. He helped launch WQXR as a public station in 2009 and has served as its program director and interim general manager. Previously, he worked at WNYC, Blue Note Records and Sirius XM Radio. At NEPM, Abramovitz will be responsible for leading its efforts across radio, television, and digital media platforms. “He is committed to the mission and goals of public media and the role that it plays in creating and supporting a strong, vibrant, local community,” said Robert Feldman, chair of the NEPM presidential search committee. Abramovitz succeeds Martin Miller, who announced his decision to retire as president of New England Public Media last year.