USA Today hires Brecher, ex-WSJ, Bloomberg editor

Joanne Lipman, the chief content officer at Gannett, sent out the following announcement on Monday:

Colleagues,

I am delighted to announce that John Brecher will be joining us on a six-month assignment as Executive Story Editor for the USA TODAY Network, beginning on Wednesday, June 22.

In this new role, John will be working across the Network to help conceptualize, craft, and edit our most high-impact pieces, as well as to provide coaching sessions to raise our game in storytelling. He will primarily split his time between Tysons and NYC, and will report to me.

We are remarkably fortunate to have John work with us.  As an editor, he has overseen eight Pulitzer Prize winning packages at The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

He started his career at the Miami Herald, becoming the Herald’s youngest City Editor – breaking a record, coincidentally, once set by Al Neuharth.  At the WSJ, he led the Page One desk from 1992 to 2000, presiding over an unprecedented string of seven Pulitzers and overseeing a staff of a dozen editors (including me, who he coaxed out of reporting and into my first editing job). He was hired for a very similar role at Bloomberg News in 2011.  Last year, a series in which he was instrumental earned Bloomberg its first Pulitzer Prize.   Along the way, he and his wife Dottie Gaiter also wrote the wildly successful wine column for WSJ’s Weekend Journal.

John is a 2014 recipient of the Gerald Loeb lifetime achievement award for editing. There’s a fun three-minute video that tells you a bit more about him – go to this link and then click on Q&A with John Brecher, in the middle of the page. http://bloom.bg/1P6oqVi.  You can also check out the Twitter hashtag #brecherstories.

Please join me in welcoming John.