Vocativ, a startup that aims to break news using data and the deep Web, took additional steps in its 2015 reboot Tuesday, making two senior appointments and solidifying its beat coverage.
In a memo to staff, Chief Content Officer Gregory Gittrich announced the appointment of Alex Koppelman to the position of editorial director. Koppelman, a New Yorker alumnus who’s currently enterprise editor at Guardian U.S., will be charged with determining the startup’s editorial priorities and managing the day-to-day news report.
Gittrich also announced the appointment of Susie Banikarim to the position of vice president of content strategy and audience engagement. Banikarim will lead Vocativ’s content strategy and supervise its “audience growth, social media, editorial marketing, search, and content partnerships,” according to the memo. In 2014, Banikarim was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and has done stints at Newsweek, The Daily Beast and “ABC World News.”
The memo also outlines specific areas of coverage for Vocativ as it continues a reorganization that began in January with Gittrich’s hiring. Moving forward, the staff will focus on six beats: national security, technology, gender, culture, criminal justice and real-time news:
With that in mind, Susie, Alex and I will team with my other direct reports – Gitit Greenberg, our head of data; Elena Haliczer, our head of product, and Bill Piersol, our head of video – to structure the content operation into units. Each editorial unit will obsess over specific beats that are vital to our audience. The units will be built with an emphasis on visual and data storytelling, breaking down traditional lines between writers, video producers, data analysts, audience development experts and developers.
Each beat coverage will be covered by interdisciplinary teams that include writers, video producers, data analysts, audience development experts and developers, according to the memo. Gittrich plans to add journalists to cover the beats and name senior editors to lead each. In January, Poynter reported that the 50-person staff at Vocativ was projected to grow between 25 and 30 percent this year.
Here’s the memo:
Hello everyone,
I’m very excited to announce two important additions to our team.
Alex Koppelman is joining Vocativ as Editorial Director. Alex, who comes to us from the Guardian US, is a creative and versatile editor whose strong news judgment is matched by his wit and drive. He will work with us on refining the voice and focus of Vocativ, taking full advantage of our deep web technology and data science expertise to produce meaningful and agenda-setting journalism. Among his responsibilities will be setting our editorial priorities, expanding our news operation, and driving our daily coverage.
Alex has played an important role in the impressive growth and success of the Guardian US, directing its daily news agenda. He was recently promoted to enterprise editor, overseeing the Guardian US’s investigations and news features. His notable work included a series in partnership with The Texas Observer focusing on illegal immigration that won the 2015 National Magazine Award for multimedia. Prior to the Guardian, Alex was politics editor for The New Yorker’s website; senior editor at Adweek, where he helped reimagine and re-launch the brand; and senior writer at Salon, where he also ran the War Room blog. Alex starts at Vocativ the first week of March.
Susie Banikarim joins us as Vice President, Content Strategy and Audience Engagement. An editor, producer and leader with an impressive diversity of experience and seemingly boundless energy, Susie will help us experiment with new ways to tell stories and engage with our young audience. She will drive our content strategy and oversee audience growth, social media, editorial marketing, search, and content partnerships.
Susie was recently a 2014 Nieman fellow at Harvard where she immersed herself in ideas around visual storytelling, digital media strategy, and online business models. She previously was deputy director of editorial for Newsweek Daily Beast where she created and executive produced Daily Beast TV. She served as senior producer for ABC World News and an anchor producer for Diane Sawyer. Before being chosen as a Nieman fellow, Susie oversaw news coverage for Katie Couric’s syndicated talk show, which she helped launch. Susie has been honored with the Edward R. Murrow Award for feature reporting as well as five Emmy award nominations. She joins Vocativ next week.
We all know that success is no longer defined entirely by how many people visit our homepage and site. So our focus will be on creating stories that live on platforms where our young audience spends most of its time – Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Thanks to your creativity and hard work, we’re already differentiating ourselves by using our deep web technology and data expertise to tell great stories. We were the first to discover and publish the video of the Paris grocery store gunman declaring allegiance to ISIS. We also built a data tool that allowed us to analyze President Obama’s State of the Union and compare it with all other SOTU addresses dating back to Woodrow Wilson. And we had fun studying 57 years of Billboard charts to see which days of the week inspired the most hit songs.
Video, data visualizations, animation, and graphic art will be key to our stories going forward.
With that in mind, Susie, Alex and I will team with my other direct reports – Gitit Greenberg, our head of data; Elena Haliczer, our head of product, and Bill Piersol, our head of video – to structure the content operation into units. Each editorial unit will obsess over specific beats that are vital to our audience. The units will be built with an emphasis on visual and data storytelling, breaking down traditional lines between writers, video producers, data analysts, audience development experts and developers.
We will focus initially on national security, technology, gender, culture, criminal justice, and real-time news. We’ll be hiring journalists to fill positions across all our coverage areas – and soon we’ll name senior editors to lead each unit.
In the weeks ahead, we’ll talk more about our plans to expand our video partnerships, redesign our site, and launch new products.
Thank you for all the support since I joined Vocativ. Please now join me in welcoming Alex and Susie to the team.
Greg
