WSJ.com names new staff members

Christine Glancey, the deputy managing editor of WSJ.com, sent out the following staff announcements shortly before noon on Wednesday:

I’m pleased to announce new appointments to the wsj.com hub team.

Rachel Rosenthal of Dow Jones Newswires and Elizabeth Yuan of CNN will be joining us over the next two months as Kristi Oloffson takes on a new role to focus exclusively on video.

Rachel will be joining the WSJ.com news hub as part of the night leadership team with Meredith D’Agnolo and Kathryn Lurie, succeeding Christina Kline who is taking a soon-to-be announced role in mobile. Rachel joined Dow Jones as a copy editor in 2008, and currently helps oversee part of the real-time news desk at Dow Jones Newswires.  Over the past year, she has helped shepherd the headline desk through its integration with the copy desk, ensuring the combined group seamlessly publishes breaking-news items for Newswires and the Journal.  Rachel also helped launch SmartMoney.com‘s blog on taxes as writer and editor, and has appeared on The Wall Street Journal’s Web show, “The Tax Report.” Rachel started her career in journalism as a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund intern at The Star-Ledger.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Rachel earned her bachelor’s degree in history with distinction in 2005, and completed her concentration in East European studies.  She graduated with a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2008.  Before journalism school, Rachel worked as a paralegal at Covington & Burling LLP. Outside work, Rachel co-chairs the New York chapter of the Stanford Women’s Network.  Otherwise you can find her lamenting her golf swing or trail running with her three-year-old rescue mutt, Riley.

Elizabeth will join the WSJ.com hub team from CNN where she got her start 14 years ago as a “VJ,” teleprompting for morning shows, putting scripts in numerical order, floor directing, stacking chairs for “Talk Back Live” and serving as its camera grip (i.e. holding the camera cord so that no one would trip). She entered the editorial track, writing for then-CNN Headline News, CNN International, CNN/USA and CNN Wires before transitioning to CNN.com, all in Atlanta. More recently, for the last six years, she has been a digital producer in Hong Kong for CNN.com International, where she was homepage editor on Election Night, the second biggest day in the site’s history, and then during China’s own leadership transition immediately after.

Between 2003-2005, under the one-person Sipapu Films label, Elizabeth distributed a Greek-language film, “Hard Goodbyes: My Father,” to more than 40 theatres around the United States, the final weeklong engagement of which was at Village East Cinema. This was achieved while she wrote for Headline News on the 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. shift. Elizabeth majored in English and French at Columbia and is a graduate of its journalism school.

Kristi joins the video department at a time of rapid growth and will be instrumental in addressing a key challenge: matching our stories to our full library of video news and feature offerings. Kristi’s entrepreneurial style will be a good fit for finding new ways to surface video where and when our readers want it most.

Kristi joined the night news hub at WSJ.com in August 2010, handling breaking news, production and homepage management. She served as a Saturday editor for 2+ years, where she handled stories such as the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, the Gabby Giffords shooting, and the selection of Paul Ryan as a VP candidate. Before coming to WSJ, she worked at Time magazine as its homepage weekend editor. She did stints at Money magazine and Indianapolis Monthly magazine. Kristi holds a degree in journalism from Indiana University.

Please join me in congratulating Kristi and Rachel in their new roles and welcoming Elizabeth when she arrives. I am thrilled they are joining our team.