Categories: OLD Media Moves

McClatchy DC bureau chief leaves for SmartBrief

John Walcott, the Washington bureau chief for McClatchy, is leaving that position to become chief content office and editor in chief of SmartBrief, which produces industry newsletters and blogs.

SmartBrief is based in Washington and produces more than 100 industry newsletters.

In a memo posted on Politico.com, Walcott wrotes, “I am resigning, effective on October 27, to become the chief content officer and editor-in-chief of SmartBrief, Inc., a Washington-based online business information company on whose advisory board I’ve served for 11 years.

“This has not been an easy decision, and I thank all of you whom I’ve consulted about it. There are bigger Washington bureaus, and there are better-known ones, but I don’t think there’s a better one. From child slavery in the cocoa trade to off-label prescription drugs to the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq and the detainees at Guantanamo, to Moody’s and Goldman Sachs’s roles in triggering the Great Recession and the coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and far beyond, I don’t think that any news organization can claim to speak truth to power better than this bureau does. For that, I thank the reporters and editors who did the real work and the corporate leaders in San Jose and Sacramento who backed them up — Tony Ridder, Jerry Ceppos, Howard Weaver, Heather Fagundes, David Westphal and especially Clark Hoyt and Gary Pruitt. With Gary’s and Heather’s support, I know that this fine work will continue to grow, and I hope that the recognition of it will finally catch up with the reality.

“For me, however, the time has come to try something different that I also believe is important — marrying the eternal virtues of journalism, starting with independence, that the McClatchy bureau embodies to the new technologies that SmartBrief has pioneered and the new realities of the 21st Century.”