Bell named editor in chief of Barron’s

Almar Latour, publisher and executive vice president of the Dow Jones Media Group, sent out the following announcement to the staff on Tuesday:

Colleagues,

I’m thrilled to announce that Katherine Bell is appointed Editor-in-Chief of Barron’s Magazine.  She will lead Barron’s newsroom, oversee its digital transformation, and seek to further expand its global subscriber audience of investors and financial professionals.

As it approaches its 100th anniversary, Barron’s remains one of the most enduring forces in financial journalism — and under Katherine’s leadership the magazine looks set to prosper even more in years to come.

Katherine joins us from Harvard Business Review, where she was the Editor of HBR.org and oversaw editorial innovation across all of HBR’s platforms. She’s an expert at managing digital change: Under her leadership, the magazine’s global digital audience grew sharply and HBR’s site won several awards, including a Webby Award for best business website in 2016 and 2017.  She also created and authored The Insider, a weekly newsletter for HBR subscribers, which quickly became a must-read for corporate leaders around the world.

Katherine and her team at HBR.org produced compelling coverage of a wide range of topics including blockchain’s disruption of the banking industry, Brexit negotiations, the rewards of managing for the long-term, and the venture capital industry. Her team last year published the most widely read digital article in HBR’s history — on what people don’t get about the working class in the U.S. — which proved so popular that it was expanded into a book.

Katherine is a uniquely creative leader with eclectic experience and a lengthy history in digital publishing. Prior to her decade-long tenure at HBR, Katherine was digital managing editor for America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated, website director for English cooking legend Delia Smith, and director of content for PlanetOut, one of the first news, entertainment, and social sites aimed at the LGBT community. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories. In 2016, she helped start the DADA2 Foundation to support research into her daughter’s rare disease.

Katherine will start August 28. She will report to me.

Please join me in welcoming Katherine as she takes on this exciting new role.

Bell replaces Edward Finn, who left earlier this year after 24 years running the publication.