HuffPo’s Goodman to become editor of International Business Times

Peter S. Goodman, the executive business editor and global news editor of The Huffington Post, is leaving the website to become editor in chief of International Business Times.

He replaces Jeffrey Rothfeder, who left earlier this year.

Leslie Kaufman of The New York Times writes, “IBT Media, the publication’s corporate parent, announced the appointment Tuesday morning. International Business Times is the flagship title of IBT Media, which also recently acquired and relaunched Newsweek magazine.

“Mr. Goodman’s departure comes just weeks after a tense disagreement with Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, which owns The Huffington Post. On an internal conference call last month, Mr. Armstrong had singled out the cost of providing medical coverage for ‘distressed babies’ as part of the reason the company was altering 401(k) benefits to staff members. Mr. Goodman and his wife had one of the infants with such needs and spoke publicly of being offended by the comment. Mr. Armstrong later apologized and reinstated the benefits.

“In a phone interview, however, Mr. Goodman, a former reporter for The New York Times, implied that that incident was not the reason he was moving on. ‘That was a really painful moment for my family and that’s been talked about, but that is not where my head is focused today,’ he said.

“He said he was very excited about the potential for building International Business Times, which was founded in 2006. The site has about 16.5 million monthly unique visitors in the United States and 30 million worldwide through its network of digital publishing platforms.”

Read more here. And here is a Q&A we did with Goodman in November 2013.