BuzzFeed announced Friday that it’s hired Stacy-Marie Ishmael from the Financial Times to lead the editorial side of the BuzzFeed News application, reports Caroline O’Donovan of Nieman Journalism Lab.
O’Donovan writes, “Ishmael is currently vice president of communities at the FT. She was one of the creators of the now-defunct FT Tilt and the early financial blog FT Alphaville. She also worked as a product manager at Percolate, where, funnily enough, she once interviewed Noah Chestnut for a job.
“‘I was super impressed with her,’ he says. ‘We talked about Reddit for like an hour.’
“Prior to all of that, Ishmael was a finance reporter, which means she has experience on both the editorial and product side of a newsroom.
“‘She sort of embodies what we hope is the strength that we’ll bring to this space,’ says BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith. ‘She’s a real journalist who’s been in the fulcrum of some of the biggest stories in the world at a great news organization. She’s also a person who comes from the Internet and has thought deeply about and worked on product. Along with that sort of experience and intelligence, she has the leadership ability that this job requires.'”
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