Media On The Move: Week of April 20, 2020

By Georgina Rupp

As communities and industries worldwide continue to adapt to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re keeping a pulse on the shifts among key media members and outlets. Digital news consumption is on the rise while the industry itself is significantly shifting to adapt to dominant coverage of the pandemic and plummeting advertising dollars.

Companies across sectors are reacting to the economic downturn by cutting back on their advertising spend, and the impact is hitting the newspaper industry hard, leading to a major wave of closures and layoffs. Recently, Bustle laid off 24 members of its staff and cut salaries for others, as well as closed down its culture site, The Outline. Buzzfeed is cutting pay for its employees, and Maven Media Brands, which operates Sports Illustrated, announced layoffs and pay cuts.

Meanwhile, the boost in digital news consumption is leading to a rise in subscriptions for the largest digital publishers, shown in a study by business management consultancy, Mather Economics. Recently, online news publishers have experienced a 60 percent increase in web traffic, according to a recent report by technology company Parse.ly. CNBC Digital hit a record number of unique visitors last month, surpassing February’s visitors by more than 200 percent to achieve 1 billion page views for the first time in a single month.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to dominate the news cycle. A recent analysis by Cision revealed that mentions of coronavirus recently outpaced mentions of President Trump, who has dominated news coverage since 2016.

Last month a reporter with The Seattle Times, Paige Cornwell, started the Journalist Furlough GoFundMe for journalists who have been temporarily laid off or had their hours reduced across the U.S. amid the pandemic. During this difficult time, members of the media continue to be on the move. Some of the most notable, recent changes can be found below. 


Quartz

  • Karen K. Ho has joined Quartz to cover global finance and economics.

Harvard Business Review

  • Tom Stackpole joined Harvard Business Review as a senior editor covering technology and innovation after three years with Boston Magazine.

Warner Media

  • WarnerMedia named Hulu co-founder Jason Kilar as CEO, effective May 1. 

Wall Street Journal

  • Kim Last has been appointed as acting head of Live Journalism, following Nikki Waller’s move to the corporate team.

Digiday

  • Cale Guthrie Weissman has been named the new editor at Digiday’s Modern Retail following previous roles at Fast Company, Business Insider and as a freelancer.

Washington Post

  • Rachel Lerman joins the publication as a breaking news technology reporter in San Francisco following her previous role covering technology with a focus on Google at the Associated Press.

Financial Times

  • Samuel Agini has been hired as the new sports business reporter.

NBC News

  • Kevin Collier joins NBC News  as a reporter on its business/technology/media team covering topics around national security, cybersecurity and disinformation.

Business Insider

  • Gloria Dawson takes on the role of senior editor at Business Insider overseeing its retail coverage.

Bloomberg News

  • Elizabeth Elkin has been hired as a reporter to start full-time next month.