Columbia hires Narisetti to run Knight-Bagehot program

The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has hired Raju Narisetti to run its Knight-Bagehot program for business journalists.

He replaces Terri Thompson, who retired after running the program for 25 years.

The Bagehot program for business journalists was started in 1975 by Steve Shepard, who went on to become editor of BusinessWeek magazine and the founding dean of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

In the program, journalists take a year off work and enroll in classes across campus, including the business school.

It was renamed the Knight-Bagehot program in 1987 after a $3 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Narisetti is the first non-Bagehot alum to run the program since Chris Welles ran it in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His experience in digital media was attractive to the program.

“Both business journalism and the business of journalism are facing unprecedented uncertainty and tumult,” said Narisetti in a statement. “The Columbia Journalism School, which is also home to the Brown Institute for Media Innovation and The Tow Center for Digital Journalism, coupled with the world-renowned Columbia Business School, offers a unique opportunity to explore and innovatively address these challenges.”

Narisetti most recently was CEO of Gizmodo Media Group, which includes websites Gizmodo, Deadspin, Jezebel, Jalopnik, Kotaku and Lifehacker. He left there in April.

Before that, he was senior vice president of strategy at Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch.com and Barron’s.

He initially joined The Journal in April 1994 as a reporter in Pittsburgh, covering consumer goods and then technology. After working on the national desk, he rose quickly to be a deputy managing editor and editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.

He left the Journal in 2006 to found Mint, India’s No. 2 business daily, and then was managing editor of The Washington Post before rejoining the Journal in February 2012 to run the WSJ Digital Network.