G/O Media Promotes Deadspin EIC Jim Rich to Editorial Director | People on the Move
Plus, new hires and promotions at TIME, The Atlantic, Arizent, Reuters and more.

G/O Media announced Wednesday that Deadspin editor-in-chief Jim Rich has been promoted to editorial director across the company’s entire portfolio, which also includes sites like The A.V. Club, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Onion, among others.

As editorial director, Rich—the former New York Daily News editor-in-chief who was brought on in January to lead a relaunch of Deadspin—fills an opening left by the departure of G/O Media’s previous editorial director, Paul Maidment, who exited in November after a staff revolt saw Deadspin‘s entire editorial team resign over the course of a few days.

“G/O Media is proud to announce Mr. Rich’s new position as an affirmation to our business’s commitment to exceptional journalism and the continued success of our unique media properties,” said CEO Jim Spanfeller in a statement.

Elsewhere at G/O, Gizmodo editor-in-chief Kelly Bourdet announced she’s leaving to join CNN Business as assistant managing editor, working across the tech, media, transportation and consumer desks. Bourdet will be joined by Jalopnik deputy editor (and interim editor-in-chief) Michael Ballaban, who is also moving from G/O Media to CNN Business, where he’ll serve as transportation editor. Additionally, CNN Business has hired former CNBC.com news editor Anjali Robins as consumer, food and retail editor.

At Kotaku, news editor Jason Schreier left the gaming site after more than eight years to join the Bloomberg News tech team as a reporter, writing on Twitter, “I hope that the attrition at G/O Media convinces our private equity owners to make the management changes needed for all of our websites to survive.”

Back at Jalopnik, G/O added that it’s hired Rory Carroll as that site’s next editor-in-chief, effective May 4. Carroll joins from Crain Communications’ Autoweek, where he’d served in different capacities since 2012, including as publisher and executive editor. He succeeds former Jalopnik editor-in-chief Patrick George, who left G/O in December to join The Drive as editorial director.

Here are the rest of this week’s people on the move…

Even as layoffs, pay cuts and furloughs roil much of the media industry, Marc and Lynne Benioff’s Time continues to announce new hires on an almost weekly basis. This week, it’s Bharat Krish as chief technology officer and Michelle Evers as director of partnerships.

Krish previously spent five years at HBO, including as CIO in Latin America, and before that spent several years at NBC Universal, most recently as director of media technology. Since last July, he had been with hospitality tech company OTG Management (the company behind, among other things, those iPads in airport terminal restaurants), where he also served as CTO.

Evers joins from the media and marketing intelligence firm Valassis, where she had been sales director since last year. Previously, Evers spent twelve years in sales at Bloomberg L.P. from 2007 to 2019, most recently as U.S. advertising partnerships director for the technology/telco sector, selling across digital, print, audio and mobile, as well as TV and events.

The Atlantic has hired Barton Gellman as a staff writer, focused initially on the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s response. Gellman spent more than two decades at The Washington Post, where his work helped earn the paper three different Pulitzer Prizes, including in 2014 for leading the Post‘s coverage of the National Security Agency’s global surveillance programs based on leaked documents by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The Atlantic says it’s investing heavily in its COVID-19 coverage, which it says has helped double the site’s record for monthly traffic in March and helped generate 36,000 new subscriptions.

Reuters has appointed Eric Danetz as head of revenue, a newly created role reporting to president Michael Friedenberg and responsible for, among other things, growing the news agency’s direct to consumer business and diversifying its customer base.

Danetz joins Reuters from AccuWeather, where he spent the past three years, first as global chief revenue officer and most recently as chief business officer. Prior to that, Danetz was at Time Inc., where he served as group publisher of Fortune and Money from 2014 to 2016 and then as SVP and GM of Time Inc. International from 2016 to 2017.

Arizent has promoted former Financial Planning assistant managing editor Maddy Perkins to managing editor of editorial operations across the company’s portfolio, which also includes publications like American Banker and The Bond Buyer, among numerous others. Perkins joined the company, then known as SourceMedia, as an intern in 2014, rising to assistant managing editor of the company’s investment advisor group of titles in 2016.

Meanwhile, PEI Media, publisher of Private Equity International and PE Hub, among other titles, has hired longtime Arizent/SourceMedia veteran Richard Melville as editorial director, U.S., working across the London-based company’s U.S. operations.

Melville spent more than two decades at Arizent and its predecessors, most recently as group editorial director, banking and markets, before exiting in an apparent restructuring earlier this month.

Former VP and associate publisher Josh Schimmels is returning to the Los Angeles Business Journal as publisher and CEO. Schimmels spent the past year as publisher at AZ Big Media, parent company of Arizona Business magazine, and before that was business group publisher at D Magazine, responsible for D CEO and the Dallas-Fort Worth Real Estate Review, among other properties.

Schimmels replaces Anna Magzanan, who left in March to join the Los Angeles Times as chief of staff and head of strategy and revenue.

CyberRisk Alliance, the B2B media company launched late in 2018 by former SourceMedia CEO Doug Manoni, has hired Parham Eftekhari as SVP and executive director of the Cybersecurity Collaborative, a peer membership program for information security leaders in government and corporations, which CyberRisk Alliance acquired last year. Eftekhari joins from the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a non-profit cybersecurity think tank which he founded in 2014.

Above the Law and Fashionista parent Breaking Media made a pair of additions to the sales team at its Breaking Defense brand: Renee Wheeler as senior director, strategic accounts and Tania Norris as senior director, sales and business development.

Wheeler joins from Defense News, where she spent the past 25 years, most recently as media solutions manager. Norris also joins from Defense News, where she spent the last four years as a media solutions consultant, and previously spent over a decade at 1105 Media, selling across Federal Computer Week, Government Computer News and Washington Technology.

Clifton Stanley Lemon is joining Endeavor Business Media as co-chair of the Strategies in Light conference. Lemon will split duties with Robert Steele, who has led the annual event for lighting professionals for the past 21 years.

Conley Publishing Group has hired Sandy Wysocki as publisher of the Milwaukee-based monthly magazine MKE Lifestyle. It’s a return to media for Wysocki, who previously spent 14 years at the Milwaukee Business Journal, most recently as audience development director, before leaving in 2016.