CQ Roll Call names Ellis its chief content officer

CQ Roll Call announced Friday the promotion of David Ellis to chief content officer.

Currently the vice president of news, Ellis replaces David Rapp in the top editorial position.

“David Ellis has brought world class expectations for innovation and collaboration to our news operation, while holding a deep respect for our history and our culture of collaboration,” says Keith White, managing director and executive vice president, in a statement. “He is the perfect person to help propel us to the future.”

Ellis has spent more than two decades covering politics and business in the U.S. and U.K. As vice president of news at CQ Roll Call, Ellis oversaw the launch of the new look for CQ.com, established a daily Twitter feed featuring highlights of the news service’s exclusive content and led initiatives that saw traffic surge 30 percent on a daily basis. Under Ellis’ leadership, the CQ Roll Call newsroom live streamed continuous election-night coverage and produced a guide to the new members of Congress within 24 hours of polls closing.

“In the past six months I’ve been excited to see our newsroom expanding its policy analysis and using new media outlets to expand our audience,’’ Ellis said in a statement. “Succeeding Dave Rapp, a giant in Washington journalism, is both a privilege and a challenge. My first job is to build on the collaborative, entrepreneurial approach to newsgathering Dave instilled between CQ and Roll Call.”

He joined CQ Roll Call after serving as the editor-at-large at the Bloomberg News Washington bureau, where he led a yearlong freedom of information project tracking the Obama administration’s open-government pledge and a series on the Justice Department’s prosecution of whistle blowers.

CQ Roll Call is actively seeking Ellis’s replacement for the vice president of news position.