CNN Business hires editors for beat teams, promotes staffers

Jason Farkas, general manager of CNN Business, sent out the following announcement on Thursday:

Hello all – I have some exciting news to share.

In December 2019, the leadership team at CNN Business presented a newsroom redesign that called for the establishment of a Newsdesk alongside five Beat Teams – Tech, Media, Markets, Transportation and Consumer.

To bring the plan to life we needed to recruit first class editors to lead our new teams, enhance the editor-to-writer ratio, and bring deep expertise to our focus areas. We began an in-depth process to find the top talent in business news to join this incredible team.

Today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to them.

Kelly Bourdet will be our Assistant Managing Editor for the Beat Teams, guiding our critical coverage from our Tech, Media, Transportation, and Consumer sections. Kelly was most recently Editor in Chief of Gizmodo where she led a newsroom of over 30 journalists across five desks covering the business and culture of tech. While at Gizmodo she launched Earther, G/O Media’s climate science-focused vertical, as well at The Gateway, Gizmodo’s first investigative podcast. Prior to Gizmodo, Kelly held leadership positions at Vocativ and Refinery29, where she founded the site’s health and technology verticals, and was a contributing writer and columnist at Vice’s Motherboard. Kelly will report to Alex Koppelman and will start her new role on May 4th.

Allison Morrow – a familiar face to many of you already – is joining CNN Business as Senior Editor on the Newsdesk. Allison has been at CNN Digital for nearly four years as a senior leader on the social publishing team that runs our flagship accounts. However Allison’s roots are in business news, spending nearly a decade at the Wall Street Journal in several leadership positions, including International News Editor and Chief Asia News Editor. Allison will report to David Goldman and joins us officially on May 4^th.

Anjali Robins will be our first dedicated Consumer, Food & Retail Editor. Anjali was most recently a News Editor at CNBC.com. Prior to that Anjali was a Reporter at Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires covering topics from telecom to real estate. She also joins our growing cohort of Knight Bagehot alumni. Anjali will report to Kelly and she starts next Monday April 20^th.

Michael Ballaban is joining CNN Business as Transportation Editor, guiding critical coverage of airlines, autos, space and the travel industry in this period of crisis. Michael was most recently interim Editor in Chief at Jalopnik, where he began as a Weekend Editor seven years ago. In addition to leading the Jalopnik editorial team’s passionate coverage of car culture and the auto industry, Michael was also the host of Car vs. America on Fusion TV. Michael – once an intern on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer – makes his triumphant return to CNN next Monday, reporting to Kelly.

I also want to welcome Emily Jipson to CNN Business. Emily is our new Senior Director of Product, guiding our path forward from a site that primarily serves text and video toward a platform that builds deep relationships with users around their financial lives (no small task).  Prior to CNN, Emily was at eMoney, where she led their suite of financial planning products. Emily also led Zillow’s New York product portfolio – aka StreetEasy, was Head of Product at Yahoo! Finance, launched a robo-advisor to empower female investors for fintech startup WorthFM, and led product teams for the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. Emily began last Monday, and has already hit the ground running.

Emily, Kelly, Allison, Anjali and Michael could not be joining our team at a better time: CNN Business is front-and-center covering a spiraling recession which has upended every corner of business and the economy. The business journalism we create is more essential now to CNN – and the world – than it has been in over a decade.

In addition to these fantastic new colleagues, I also want to formally announce that several of your current colleagues at CNN Business have stepped into new roles recently:

Logan Whiteside is now a Supervising Producer on the Video team. Logan leads CNN Business’ team of talented producers who push the bounds of video storytelling and find new ways to make business and tech video interesting, visual and timely.

Sara O’Brien is now a Senior Writer following a streak of award-winning investigations into startups and big tech. Her recent coverage of Amazon and the explosive story on Instacart that she wrote with Kaya last week are emblematic of Sara’s powerful reporting.

Kathryn Vasel is also now a Senior Writer. Her indispensable career advice and insights on workplace culture has formed the basis of a brand-new CNN Business newsletter, Work Transformed. 

Laurie Frankel is now a Producer II on our Live Experiences team, where she has been a force behind Markets Now and countless explainers on the economy.

Richa Naik is now also a Producer II on the Business Video team. In the past year, Richa has led video for Risk Takers, produced interviews with Jamie Dimon and Sundar Pichai, and hacked Donie.

This moment truly marks a new chapter for CNN Business.

Please join me in welcoming our new teammates, and congratulating our colleagues.

-Jason