Bloomberg’s Topolsky is model of modern news editor

Joshua Topolsky

Thornton McEnery of Crain’s New York profiles Joshua Topolsky, chief digital content officer at Bloomberg Media.

McEnery writes, “Joshua Topolsky is the very model of a modern news editor. A former DJ, the Pittsburgh native was named editor of techie webzine Engadget in 2008, putting him at the center of the schism between old and new media. In 2011, he co-founded The Verge, a tech-news website that launched with 4 million unique viewers — and had gained an additional 10 million by 2014, when its parent company, Vox Media, was valued at more than $200 million.

“That success caught the attention of Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith, who hired Mr. Topolsky last summer to bring his multiplatform news model to the company. Since taking his talents to the tower, Mr. Topolsky has made a number of key hires and in January he launched Bloomberg’s new site.

“‘At the last beta test, I was standing in a room full of developers and I just said aloud at one point, ‘This is a big [expletive deleted] site!’ ‘ Mr. Topolsky recalled. ‘The room was silent for a moment and then they all started laughing, like, ‘no duh.’ ‘”

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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.