Fortune hires four, starts “Venture” site

Fortune has hired a new editor, Lauren Covello, previously managing editor of Entrepreneur.com, the digital arm of Entrepreneur magazine, to run the new vertical called “Venture” on Fortune.com.

Covello joined Entrepreneur in July 2013 after more than five years at Fox Business, where she was a reporter, editor and booker. Prior to that, She was an assistant buyer at Saks Fifth Avenue and a graduate of the company’s management training program.

Covello graduated from New York University in 2006 with a B.A. in journalism and a minor in art history. She was named one of Folio’s Top Women in Media in 2015. She starts Feb. 29.

Here is an excerpt from Fortune editor Alan Murray’s letter to readers in the March 1 issue:

[Fortune Venture is] an all-new section of Fortune.com that will serve entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and people who nurture the spirit of founders and innovators, wherever they may be. Fortune’s focus is not ‘Big Business,’ but rather the people who want to succeed in business.

Writing about fast- growing startups is nothing new for the magazine. We annually celebrate our ’40 Under 40,’ many of whom are entrepreneurs, and we publish an annual list of Fastest-Growing Companies. But the rapid growth of our digital platforms in the past two years has given us the opportunity to reach a much broader audience than ever before. Venture will use all the rich tools of digital and social media to provide inspiration, insight, and advice to a new generation of business disrupters.

To help us do that, we’ve hired Lauren Covello, previously managing editor of Entrepreneur.com, as editor of Venture. She will be joined by our own social media maven, Polina Marinova, as deputy editor. They will work closely with assistant managing editor Leigh Gallagher, who oversees 40 Under 40 and who has made interviews with entrepreneurs a staple of Fortune Live, the weekly video show she hosts. Over the coming months they’ll be building Venture into a multimedia platform for both original journalism and contributions from entrepreneurs, influencers, and other experts.

To honor the launch of Venture, this issue of Fortune tells the story of 15 people who are upending a broad spectrum of business.

In addition, Fortune has made a couple other new digital hires:

Rachel King has joined the tech team as an editor. She comes to Fortune.com from CBS Interactive in her native San Francisco, where she covered business technology for ZDNet and CNET for almost seven years. Before that, she worked at The Business Insider and Fast Company. She’s a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism as well as an unabashed francophile. She will be relocating to New York in coming months.

Lucinda Shen has joined Fortune.com as a reporter. Shen is a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill with a degree in journalism. Before joining Fortune, she interned at Business Insider, where she covered the financial industry.

Sayak “Sy” Mukherjee will also be joining as a writer for Fortune. Mukherjee will help write a daily digital newsletter on the health care/pharmaceutical industry, which is scheduled to debut in late April. He will also cover health care, pharma, medicine and bioscience for Fortune.com and contribute to the magazine. He joins from BioPharma Dive, a Washington, D.C.–based newsletter, where he has been an associate editor. Prior to that, Mukherjee wrote for ThinkProgress.org.