OLD Media Moves

The media biz reporter shuffle

July 12, 2010

A number of business journalists who cover the media business are changing jobs.

Devin Leonard, who has been writing for the New York Times recently, has been hired by Bloomberg Businessweek alongside Felix Gillette, who recently joined the magazine from the New York Observer. Leonard had also covered the music industry for Fortune. He started with the magazine on Monday and will be covering a variety of topics.

Leonard is a musician-turned-journalist who started his career covering jazz for obscure weeklies in Philadelphia in the ’80s. He has also worked for Wired and New York magazines.

In addition, The Wrap announced Monday that it hired longtime Newsweek media reporter Johnnie L. Roberts. He will start Aug. 1.

Roberts will be editor at large at The Wrap and will cover a broad range of entertainment news in the world of media, television and new media, weighing in with news stories, analysis and commentary, according to a release on the media site.

Having covered some of the biggest entertainment and media news stories over the past 20 years, Roberts was the recipient of the John Hancock Journalism award in 1990, was named one of the “100 Most Influential Business Journalists” by The Journalist and Financial Reporter newsletter in 1997, and received recognition from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for his detailed account of the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger.

These moves follow The Hollywood Reporter’s hiring of Kim Masters last month as editor at large. She had covered the entertainment business for The Daily Beast site.

Prior to joining The Daily Beast, Masters served as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, covered politics for the Washington Post’s “Style” section and served as a contributing editor at Time. Her work has also appeared in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.

Also, earlier this year Tom Lowry was hired by Variety. He had been with BusinessWeek.

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