ABC News hires Morris from The Economist

G. Elliott Morris

ABC News is hiring The Economist’s G. Elliott Morris to be the editorial director of data analytics for the news division, reports Ted Johnson of Deadline.

Johnson reports, “Morris has been senior data journalist and U.S. correspondent for The Economist and was the lead developer of election forecasting models for U.S. and foreign elections.

“In an interview with Deadline, Morris declined to address the staffing cuts, but suggested that there would be more integration of their work with the news division. He said that ‘we’re sort of restructuring how data journalism and FiveThirtyEight and ABC News works together.’

“Morris, who will start on June 26 and will be based in Washington, D.C., will launch ‘a full suite of poll-aggregation and election-forecasting models for U.S. elections to be used across broadcast, streaming and digital,’ ABC News President Kim Godwin said in a memo to staffers on Friday. He will work closely with the network’s politics unit and the decision desk, she said, and will report to Lulu Chiang, vice president of ABC News Digital.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.