WSJ. Magazine editor in chief Sarah Ball sent out the following on Wednesday:
Dear all,
As alluded to yesterday in our team all-hands, I’m delighted to announce that Sarah Schmidt joins our team today as our incoming Director of Editorial Operations of WSJ. Magazine & Style, backfilling the role vacated by LJ’s departure in November. For many of you, you will merrily view Sarah’s arrival as a homecoming: she was one of the earlier managing editors of WSJ. Magazine beginning in 2016, working closely with our beloved veterans (among them Scott White, Chris Knutsen, Lane Florsheim, Katie Field and Ali Bahrampour!). She also worked very closely with some of our recent arrivals at Conde Nast, including Stephanie Tran, Sam Schube, Willow Lindley and Matteo Mobilio. So in that sense, to many of you, she needs no introduction.To those of you meeting Sarah for the first time, she joins us most recently serving as the global director of editorial operations for the GQ and Pitchfork brands. Sarah is masterfully organized, famously patient, ineffably kind and a known expert in the publishing industry for supporting the multifaceted creative, operational, editorial, strategic and commercial aims of magazines, events businesses and digital media properties. She began her career at Vanity Fair, where we first overlapped, and I was lucky enough to hire Sarah once before into her much-celebrated role at GQ in 2018. Together with her deputy Megan Douglass, Sarah will make our operations spine hum, with oversight over the “how” behind our hourly, daily and monthly news reports as well as maximally effective deployment of our resources and budget in the service of readers. I can’t wait for you to get to know her or, if you already do, for you to catch up on old times.Also joining us today in my office: another Sara(h)!. Sara Hecht, starting today as my assistant, comes to us most recently from CBS, where as a page and anchor assistant, she juggled tasks as disparate as scrambling together breaking-news notes for morning on-air talent and being a calming, hyper-organized presence in the chaotic swirl of Late Night. (Those sound like long days!) Please make her feel so at home on this pictures-and-words-and-fashion-y side of the media business, and I look forward to walking her around to introduce her to you later today. Overall, huge news for Sara(h)s, and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming both to our team.Yours,s.
