Helft, ex Forbes, hired as editorial director of Message Lab

Miguel Helft

Former Forbes technology editor Miguel Helft has been hired by the Message Lab as editorial director.

Message Lab is a content agency staffed by alums from The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BusinessWeek, Business 2.0 and CNET. Staffers include former BusinessWeek correspondent Peter Burrows.

Helft left Forbes in 2018. Since that time, he has been doing consulting work and freelance writing.

He joined Forbes as the San Francisco bureau chief in January 2015 and led Forbes’ technology reporting team, guiding technology coverage, mentoring staff writers, supporting Forbes’ contributor model, as well as editing Forbes magazine and online features.

He also wrote regularly for Forbes magazine and Forbes.com, covering top companies and major stories.

Helft previously was a senior writer at Fortune magazine, covering technology. His 2013 Fortune cover story profiling Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg won a New York Press Club award for feature writing.

Previous roles included technology writer at The New York Times, editorial writer at San Jose Mercury News, senior writer at The Industry Standard, staff writer at San Jose Mercury News, and a reporter at the Los Angeles Times.

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.