Vocativ on Tuesday announced that Annemarie Dooling will be head of growth for the news startup, responsible for boosting its audience and engagement on social media.
Dooling, who has done stints at Yahoo, The Huffington Post and AOL, was previously a community advisor at Salon, where she consulted for the site’s commenting platform and moderation tools, among other things.
According to a staff memo from chief content officer Gregory Gittrich, Dooling will report to Susie Banikarim, who heads up content strategy and audience engagement at Vocativ. She will focus her efforts on social platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Several news organizations, including The New York Times, Gawker Media and BuzzFeed, have opened up positions for journalists tasked with growing their respective audiences.
Vocativ also announced the appointment of An Phung to the position of assistant managing editor. Phung was previously a senior editor at Inc. Magazine, where she made assignments and curated the homepage, according to the memo. Before that, she was news editor at NBC Owned Television Stations.
The appointments are the latest additions to a newsroom under new leadership that has set its sights on growing by at least 25 percent in 2015. Gittrich has made several hires this year but also cut staffers in February. The startup also lost its chief business officer, Steven Alperin, in March.
Here’s the memo:
Hello everyone,
I’m excited to announce two more great additions to our growing team.
Annemarie Dooling is joining Vocativ as our first Head of Growth. Annemarie’s passion for and commitment to building engaged communities online is unsurpassed. She will work closely with our editorial and social teams to amplify our stories, oversee our social channels, and help grow our overall audience. As we all know, our success is no longer defined entirely by how many people visit our homepage and site. Annemarie will use her deep understanding of the digital media landscape – as well as her creativity – to take advantage of emerging trends, with a focus on platforms where our young audience spends most of its time, from Facebook and YouTube to Instagram and Twitter.
Annemarie, who will report to Susie Banikarim, previously helped develop best practices for audience growth at Salon, Yahoo, The Huffington Post and AOL. She is a leading expert on community engagement and user-generated content and verification. In fact, she has written extensively on these topics for The New York Times and Wired, among others. Her love for identifying and engaging with communities extends well beyond digital. She has traveled to more than 25 countries, meeting and writing about subcultures, and exploring local communities. Several of you have met Annemarie over the past couple weeks. Yesterday was her first official day in the newsroom.
An Phung is joining us as Assistant Managing Editor. An is a creative and unflappable editor noted for her planning skills. She is especially adept at using data to find new ways to distribute stories to passionate audiences and she has an obsession about how news is shared. An will oversee the planning of our long-term coverage, manage our homepage and story packaging, and edit stories across all beats.
An, who will report to Alex Koppelman, has been a senior editor at Inc. Magazine, where she curated the homepage and assigned and edited daily coverage. Prior to Inc., she was news editor at NBC Owned Television Stations, covering breaking news and writing feature stories for NBC’s local digital news operations in 11 cities. An’s first day is May 4.
I’d also like to use this opportunity to share what a great few months we’ve recently had, due to all your hard work. Our new content and audience development strategies are driving strong growth, with an expansion of our young audience. Last month, Vocativ’s unique visitors and video views grew more than 50% over the previous month, and now 65% of our audience is younger than 34. Annemarie and An will continue to help us grow and innovate. Please join me in giving them a warm welcome.
Greg
Comments