POLITICO’s Global Editor-In-Chief John Harris announces newsroom organizational structure

Announcement from POLITICO’s Global Editor-In-Chief John Harris:

Team,

I became a journalist at a young age because this seemed to me the best way to explore the world and fashion a career that harnessed curiosity on behalf of the public interest. After a good while as a reporter, I first stepped into leadership positions as an editor in part because I think strong publications have an important role in improving the world, and in part because I came to love the sense of connection these jobs allow.

There is nothing more satisfying to me than to join teams, and to help to build teams, with people of like minds who like one another — and who have locked arms with a shared conviction that the work we do is essential.

It is in that spirit that I am writing to all our North American and European colleagues today.

After my new role as global editor in chief was announced on July 17, I spent the summer thinking hard with Goli and other colleagues about the organizational structure that is best suited for our goals, and the fellow leaders who will help us achieve them. This note describes our answers. We have in our midst a team — a convergence of special talent — that is more capacious than any I have encountered across several decades as a journalist and publication-builder. These leaders are going to help all of us make magic together.

There are significant new roles for important people who are currently on our team and will be playing even more central roles. These include Francesca Barber, Alex Burns, and Joe Schatz. I will describe these new roles in detail below.

At the same time, I envision large responsibilities for people who are already in top leadership ranks here. This includes European editor in chief Jamil Anderlini, and his top deputy, Kate Day, who together have committed to major growth of the publication in Brussels, Berlin, and London. Here in the United States, I am asking all of Matt Kaminski’s direct reports to continue in leadership roles, in several cases with a sharpened mandate. These include Peter Canellos, leading our enterprise coverage, Anita Kumar driving our standards work and more, Elizabeth Ralph atop POLITICO magazine, Sudeep Reddy as the leader of our policy coverage, and Luiza Savage, who is immersed in a wide roster of growth assignments.

There is, of necessity, a lot of material in this note, involving many names and important assignments. I hope you will read it carefully. It is important, naturally, to understand who holds what jobs. It is even more important that people understand the destination these leaders are driving toward. I will follow up on these words with several newsroom meetings in person and by videoconference in the coming days. A schedule will come shortly by separate email. I’m asking that people do their best to make one of these.

There are two primary themes in how I perceive POLITICO today, and these informed my choices on leadership structure. One is aspiration — our shared commitment that we can always find new ways to make our publication better and stronger. The other is core values — things about POLITICO that have always been true, and we can trust aways will be. First among these is the idealistic purpose of our work. The subjects we cover are important, and great journalism is indispensable to any free society.

POLITICO — thanks to the hard work and imagination of many people — is poised to be the most consequential publication in the world on the most consequential political and policy stories in the world. This is within our grasp. But achieving this potential requires that we markedly improve our performance in two central ways:

*The Quest For Impact

Due to changing technology and a crowded arena of competitors in politics and policy, it is harder than ever to stand out in a sea of content. It is also more imperative than ever, if we are to meet the goals the publication committed to in our new strategic plan. I believe the publication must become much more purposeful in nearly every aspect of our daily report: How we conceive and assign stories; The care we give these stories in editing; The way we present and amplify these stories on multiple platforms.

I am dissatisfied when I see stories on the site that seem routine, indistinguishable from content elsewhere. POLITICO stories, on any platform, should reflect vitality, authority, originality, and a compelling style. If not, should we be doing those stories at all? I am even more dissatisfied when I see good stories that, with a little more care, could be great ones — the kind that define the POLITICO brand. How can we seize more of these opportunities?

*Building Editorial Bridges

In the early days, POLITICO leaders thought obsessively about the challenge of standing out. As a result, what was then a small publication had a way of seeming to the audience much bigger than we were really were. Today, paradoxically, I fear we sometimes seem smaller — due to ingrained habits and assorted bureaucratic barriers — than we actually are.

This publication has best-in-class political and policy journalists in Washington and Brussels, the two most important policy capitals of the West. Our editorial assets span nine time zones, from Berlin to Sacramento. Our expertise on the most important transatlantic issues — technology, climate, trade, diplomacy, and military security — is formidable. Even so, I find that even journalists in our newsrooms sometimes have faint appreciation of the potential agenda-setting power of these assets in combination.

We can be more purposeful — that word you hear me using a lot — in getting strong content out of silos, elevating its presentation, and providing more impact and value for both paid subscribers and readers of our advertiser-supported platforms.

All my editorial leadership decisions are shaped by my desire for more impact and stronger bridges.

The fact that I am pushing for steady, sustained, disciplined improvement in the publication should not be interpreted as a rebuke of what we have now. In fact, thanks above all to Matt and Jamil and their teams, the publication is constantly producing high-quality work across multiple arenas and platforms. That is why these teams in large measure will remain intact. The challenge is how we achieve more with what we have.

I want the journalists who are at POLITICO now to feel more strongly that this place is their professional home, and that they have more opportunity to increase their impact and responsibilities here. Achieving this requires people to ask the same kinds of questions that inspired the launch of this publication in the first place: What’s the next wave of innovation in media, and how can we harness it in positive ways? How can we do better? That ambition, that restlessness, is the through-line from POLITICO of early days to the present day, and I hope always.

NEW ROLES

Joe Schatz, Executive Editor

Joe is taking on a new mandate as the top editor beneath me for all political and policy content produced by our teams on this side of the Atlantic.

*For coverage in Washington, the states and Canada, he is in charge of ensuring that my goals of more impact and stronger bridges between different coverage areas is achieved. He has my full authority to direct editors and coverage in any part of this region.

*With a number of direct reports, he will supervise editors directing coverage of Congress, Playbook, national politics and the 2024 campaign, the judiciary, national security/defense and foreign policy, and the states.

*He will be the lead news executive in Washington overseeing our California expansion, a main pillar of our strategic plan.

Joe first came to POLITICO from CQ in 2012 as tax editor, though he soon departed to follow his spouse to Burma, where she helped lead an NGO. Upon returning in 2015, he took on a series of assignments in which his judgment and discipline were indispensable. These included turning around the states operation, then facing serious obstacles, and making it the profitable and agenda-setting force it is today. In recent years he has also had large duties overseeing our platforms teams, along with newsroom budget and operations, which he will now be relinquishing as he takes the lead on content. There are three traits at the core of Joe’s personal and professional character: Intelligence, integrity, responsibility. We are fortunate that he will now be bringing these to bear on a wide swath of our coverage.

Francesca Barber, Executive Director, Global Newsroom Strategy

Francesca has held this title since arriving here from the New York Times in the spring, with a dual report to me and Goli. We are now expanding her realm of responsibilities. She will now lead our strategy on Audience and Engagement in the newsroom to ensure we're aligned across our digital platforms. The aim is to strengthen the intersection between the newsroom, product, data, and commercial, and collaborate even more closely between the European and U.S. newsrooms around our off- and on-platform promotion strategy. In this role, she will oversee Alexandra Manzano and the audience, engagement and platform teams and closely collaborate with Kate Day, Jeanette Minns and Emma Krstic.

*Her team will collaborate with our Product, Technology, Marketing, Data and Commercial teams to focus priorities and align them to the newsroom

*She will collaborate with our Chief Data Officer on setting goals across our social and search platforms, as well as on-site audience goals, and deliver key audience and coverage analyses. She will also assess how we manage on- and off-platform audiences to maximize growth and engagement, and build best practices to raise our global editorial profile.

*In concert with me and other newsroom leaders, she will build audience-first workflows across our newsrooms.

Francesca brings a splendid, seemingly custom-tailored, career background to her assignments. She was hired at the Times from a tech startup background in 2014 to be part of the first audience team in that newsroom, with an emphasis on visuals and international. While there, she ran the video audience team on and off-platform for five years. Francesca works out of the New York office but is a frequent presence in Rosslyn and a soon-to be more regular one in Brussels.

Alex Burns, Head of News

Head of News is a new position in Washington, though it has existed for some time in the European operation. In colloquial terms, this is the editor in charge of ensuring that our coverage is always in the moment — driving the conversation in ways that are more original and interesting than any competitor. The role will be the indispensable partner to Joe and to me as we lead the drive for impact.

*Alex will supervise the leaders of several teams directly, including breaking news, homepage, our graphics, interactives and visuals operation and video — units that are essential to making our report competitive, lively, and memorable.

*He will lead the morning meeting, working with editors across the room to help conceive and assign stories, and to strengthen the editing. Given his previous assignments, I have asked Alex to take an especially active role in working with our politics editors as we drive 2024 campaign coverage. He will continue to report and write under his column.

*He will work with me and other senior newsroom leaders to help POLITICO journalists organize their work for impact and thrive on their professional paths here.

This last point is a natural for Alex, as someone who came to POLITICO immediately following graduation in 2008 and took advantage of our publication’s special ability to create opportunities and vault careers. It was obvious from the moment he arrived—first as a researcher, soon as a reporter and the lead on multiple POLITICO editorial products — that Alex has special gifts. He developed those further in eight years as a top reporter at the New York Times, and as co-author, with Jonathan Martin, of the best-selling 2022 political book, This Will Not Pass. He is part of the first — happily not the last — POLITICO couple. His spouse, CNN White House correspondent MJ Lee, began her career here and remains a POLITICO cheerleader. I have long believed that Alex’s imagination and fluency in editorial strategy make him a natural newsroom leader and am thrilled that this move is coming to pass.

As I’ve made clear in recent months, one of my core goals is ensuring that we are building a newsroom not just for today, but for the long-haul. On that note, I want to add a note on Danielle Jones. Many long-time POLITICOs joined me in being thrilled last spring when Danielle returned to the publication from Axios in a consulting role. Many newcomers soon learned why she is so valued as she has immediately and artfully tackled a wide range of assignments, including helping us craft the new leadership roles we are announcing today. We owe her special thanks for that, and as we turn to the next wave of organizational tasks we will again be counting on her counsel.

I expect to be communicating frequently in coming days and weeks on other organizational matters. As I mentioned above, all of Matt Kaminski’s direct reports will continue to be at my side. In every case, however, I am asking these people to think about and report to me how to fashion their assignments on behalf of a publication that will never stop improving. Today’s note featured good news, and I expect more good news ahead.

Finally, let me emphasize that impact and bridge-building are not alone the work of senior editors. This is the work of every journalist here. Conversations are a better vehicle for answering questions and trading ideas than memos, and let’s now turn to those. As I mentioned at the top, I will be leading several in-person and remote gatherings in the days ahead. Please standby for an email on the dates and times of those.

My pledge to people I am trying to recruit — I have made it countless times over 17 years — that if you come to POLITICO you will have more fun and your work will matter more than at any other place in journalism. Let’s get to work and make that promise true for all of us.