OLD Media Moves

Investigations editor among those laid off at Quartz

May 14, 2020

Posted by Chris Roush

John Keefe

John Keefe, the investigations editor at Quartz, was among the editorial staffers laid off by the financial news site on Thursday.

On Twitter, Keefe wrote: “I’m looking for a new adventure — in journalism, news products, machine learning, truth seeking, team building, data for good, editing, or coding.” Keefe previously led the Quartz Artificial Intelligence Studio.

Keefe came to Quartz from public radio station WNYC, where he was news director and the senior editor for data news. He’s the author of “Family Projects for Smart Objects” and teaches about prototyping, machine learning, and bots at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Here’s a list of other Quartz editorial staffers who were laid off:

  • Hope Corrigan, an audience editor for special projects. She worked primarily on headline writing, copyediting, SEO optimization and social media management.
  • Daniel Wolfe, a reporter for the Things team, a cohort of journalists using non-traditional means to originate and visualize their stories. Previously he worked designing and developing content at Planet Labs, Tesla, and the Urban Institute.
  • Amrita Khalid, a technology reporter at Quartz. She previously was a contributing writer at Engadget, and has also been a staff writer at The Daily Dot and a legislative action reporter at CQ-Roll Call. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from American University and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Leeds.
  • Natasha Frost, a reporter at Quartz, covering aviation, travel, and tourism. She grew up in Singapore and New Zealand, attended the University of Oxford, and received a MS in journalism from Columbia University. Formerly of the BBC and Radio New Zealand, her work has appeared in Vice, Atlas Obscura, The Independent, Extra Crispy, and HISTORY, among other global publications.
  • Chase Purdya food business reporter. Purdy is author of “Billion Dollar Burger,” which documents the rise of cell-cultured meat and the global race to get it to market. On Twitter, Purdy wrote, “I leave feeling proud of the stories I wrote, the people I met, the many contours of humanity I learned about, and the skills I picked up along the way. Excited to see what comes next.”
  • Hanna Kozlowska, a reporter on Quartz’s investigations team. She previously worked for The New York Times as a writer for NYT Opinion and was a fellow at Foreign Policy magazine. She was also a stringer for the Times in Poland. She graduated from Swarthmore College. She speaks Polish and rusty French.
  • Jacob Templin, an executive producer in charge of video production.
  • Holly Ojalvo, the Talent Lab editor at Quartz, focusing on identifying and nurturing the best talent in digital media. She was previously director of content operations at Youth Radio, senior director of digital content at USA Today, and a deputy blog editor at The New York Times. She also founded and ran the digital news startup Kicker for four years, and in her former life taught high school English, journalism, and philosophy. On Twitter, she wrote, “Too many truly brilliant, creative, talented, smart, and generous people were let go. In a way I’m more upset for my colleagues than for myself.”
  • Pete Gelling, who was Quartz’s geopolitics editor. He previously served as an editor at WGBH’s The World, and before that at GlobalPost, where he coordinated coverage of the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He also wrote for The New York Times from Jakarta, where he lived for six years at the turn of the century.
  • Whet Moser, deputy editor of obsession at Quartz.
  • Molly Rubin, a journalist on Quartz’s video team. She was previously Quartz’s special projects researcher and editorial assistant. Prior to QZ, Molly was the executive and literary assistant to the chairman of Trident Media Group literary agency.
  • Arielle Ray, a video journalist. Ray brings Quartz’s stories to life using animation, stop motion, and video editing. She works on every subject matter under the sun, from NAFTA, to creepy artificial intelligence apps. Previously, she worked at The Wall Street Journal, covering equally varied subject matter using motion graphics.
  • Jeremy B. Merrill, a machine learning journalist.
  • Tony Lin, a video journalist.
  • Emily Withrow, director of Quartz R&D, where she leads cross-functional efforts to ideate, shape, prototype, and build new features and products. She’s also on the faculty at Northwestern University, where she taught for six years prior to joining Quartz.
  • Sam Williams, director of the workshop. Williams is obsessed with rethinking journalism, working with data and making cool things at Quartz. He worked previously at Macmillan Publishers where he worked on various digital products, primarily focused on higher ed learning.
  • Youyou Zhou, a reporter on the Quartz Things team. She covers immigration and the business of migration with data analysis, visualization, and interactive features. Prior to Quartz, she built interactive graphics at The Associated Press, where she covered the U.S. elections and Venezuela crisis.
  • Patrick deHahn, a world news reporter and news curator for Quartz, currently based in New York. Named by the Huffington Post as a “rising star in journalism,” deHahn helped launch a national live trending news show in Denver.
  • Annaliese Griffineditor of the Quartz Daily Obsession.

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