Vocativ, the news startup that aims to mine hidden crannies of the Web for story ideas, announced Monday six new appointments to various reporting, production and audience development roles.
The hires, which were touted in a staff-wide memo from Chief Content Officer Gregory Gittrich, are part of an ongoing push to reorganize the newsroom around beat coverage priorities set forth by Gittrich shortly after his arrival in January.
Among the hires:
- Tracy Clark-Flory, currently a staff writer at Salon, will join Vocativ covering gender, relationships and sex with an eye toward examining technology’s impact on human behavior.
- Gerald Rich, currently an interactive reporter at The Marshall Project, will be an interactive producer at Vocativ responsible for bolstering the startup’s visual and data storytelling efforts.
- Ryan Beckler, formerly a social media manager at the New York Daily News, will be a growth editor.
- Katka Lapelosova, the director of social media and managing editor at Matador Network, will be a growth editor.
- Jennings Brown, an associate editor at Esquire, will join Vocativ’s news and justice team.
- Sarah Lynch, a regular contributor to USA Today, will be a news editor in Vocativ’s Tel Aviv bureau.
When he joined Vocativ, Gittrich told Poynter he planned to grow the newsroom between 25 and 30 percent this year; he later announced that expansion would be focused around coverage of national security, technology, gender, culture, criminal justice and real-time news.
Capital New York reported in February that Vocativ laid off about eight staffers in order to bring the newsroom in line with Gittrich’s editorial plan.
Here’s the memo:
Hello everyone,
We have several more great additions to our team, all of whom will help fill our new, sun-drenched newsroom now under construction one floor away (part of our nearly 20,000 square-foot global headquarters.)
Tracy Clark-Flory is joining Vocativ as a senior writer, covering gender, relationships and sex, through the lens of how technology is changing our behavior. Tracy comes to us from Salon, where she’s been a staff writer on the sex beat. Her coverage has been wide-ranging – from stories about pickup artists to sexual healers to men’s rights activists – and has appeared in Salon, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Esquire, Glamour, Marie Claire, and Men’s Health. Tracy’s work has also been published twice in the annual “Best Sex Writing” anthology. Her interests, though, are broader than this recent history might suggest. Previously, she edited and wrote for Salon’s feminist blog, Broadsheet, where she covered everything from religion to politics. She has appeared on CNN, MSNBC and NPR.
Gerald Rich is joining as interactive producer, helping us expand our visual and data storytelling. Gerald comes from The Marshall Project, where he has been telling significant stories with data and interactive graphics. At Marshall, the innovative nonprofit news operation, he researched and investigated stories about digital privacy, security and crime – often highlighting problems within the criminal justice system. He honed his skills at The Texas Tribune and Houston’s NPR affiliate station and then worked as a producer at ProPublica.
We’re also continuing the expansion of our audience development team with Ryan Beckler and Katka Lapelosova, who will be joining as growth editors. Ryan was social media manager at the New York Daily News, where he focused on the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr accounts. Prior to the Daily News, Ryan helped develop the social media strategy for the launch of Fusion.
Katka joins us from the Matador Network, a media startup, where she was the director of social media and managing editor. In two years, she expanded their social media presence nearly ten-fold.
Finally, we’re bolstering our news and justice unit with the addition of Jennings Brown and Sarah Lynch to the team. Jennings, previously an associate editor at Esquire, has covered everything from science to breaking news to style. One of his notable accomplishments was building Esquire’s Ombudswoman franchise, where he enlisted figures such as Rachel Maddow, Chelsea Peretti and Carrie Brownstein to critique the magazine. Prior to Esquire, he edited the news section at Popular Mechanics. He has written for The Atlantic, Deadspin, Complex and CNN.
Sarah, who will work as a news editor from our Tel Aviv bureau, was most recently based in Cairo, covering issues of security, politics, economics, education and culture across the Middle East and North Africa. She has reported on a range of topics including human trafficking in the Sinai Peninsula, the balance between security and freedoms on university campuses in Tunisia, and the psychological suffering of Libyans during civil war. Sarah has been a frequent contributor to USA TODAY and also has been published in The Christian Science Monitor, The International Herald Tribune, The Globe and Mail, GlobalPost and Foreign Policy, among others.
Please join me now in welcoming them all to the team.
Greg
