Washington Post hires Fischer as arts and entertainment editor

Washington Post executive features editor Ben Williams, deputy features editor Hank Stuever and managing editor Krissah Thompson sent out the following on Tuesday:

We are excited to announce Jonathan Fischer has joined The Washington Post as arts and entertainment editor. In this newly created role, Jon will lead The Post’s team of reporters, critics and editors across the full range of culture, from television to opera. Jon’s arrival will begin a process of rethinking our A&E coverage, which starts with a subject-focused realignment: Janice Page will now edit movies coverage; Nicole Arthur will edit television and music; Steven Johnson will edit art and videogames; and Zachary Pincus-Roth will edit theater.

Jon comes to us from Slate, where for the past nine years he ran a smart and vibrant business, tech, and media section that included coverage of cities, architecture, and design – and wrote the occasional movie review on the side. Before Slate, Jon worked at Washington City Paper from 2009 to 2014, where he was arts editor and then managing editor. As arts editor, he marshaled critics while pushing the section to compete — with The Post — for scoops. Along the way, he made the arts a regular presence on WCP’s covers, served a short stint as the paper’s first foreign correspondent (for a feature about a garage-rock cruise to the Bahamas) and invented the U Street Taco.

Jon is a local whose parents not only took him to the Kennedy Center, but also to see black-box shows at the Source Theatre. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history and politics from Brandeis University. Jon lives with his wife, Abra, and their kids Ayla, 2, and Amalia, 5, who were supposed to see the Rothko exhibition at the National Gallery of Art but never made it past the coloring sheets in the atrium.