Today Howard Fineman, a reporter at Newsweek for 30 years, announced he’s leaving the beleaguered weekly to become a senior editor at The Huffington Post.
Newsweek has been struggling financially and The Washington Post Company sold the magazine for a small fee and its debt in August. The buyer was Sidney Harman, a businessman and philanthropist.
But there has been an exodus of talent since the company changed hands. The editor in chief resigned, and reporters fled to Time, The National Journal, Yahoo! Finance and other ventures.
But some of Newsweek’s old media veterans are finding a place in the new media world. Mark Coatney, a senior editor and manager of Newsweek’s social media presence on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, was one of Newsweek’s more high-profile staffers to leave.
The Newsweek Tumblr was praised for its conversational tone and quickly gained a following. But Coatney left Newsweek around the time of the sale to take a position at… Tumblr. He’s now their media liaison, working with publications to make their content social (see Newsweek Editor Jumps Ship to New, New Media; Joins Tumblr).
Fineman said he decided to go to The Huffington Post because the Web is “where the action is.” “The chance to dive headlong into the future is one that I don’t think anyone could pass up,” he told The New York Times Media Decoder blog.
Sounds like a major change for a career reporter at a weekly glossy to suddenly find himself at an online-only publication. The hire is also a bit of a breach for The Huffington Post, which relies on a younger staff and unpaid guest bloggers. But cross-pollination between new and old media is something we’re starting to see more of as bloggers get hired at newspapers, newspaper reporters get hired at blogs and bloggers get called on during White House press briefings.
