WSJ names Asia editor for social media

Paul Beckett, the Asia editor for The Wall Street Journal, sent out the following staff announcement on Tuesday:

We’re pleased to announce Maya Pope-Chappell has been named Asia editor for social media and analytics with immediate effect.

Maya’s appointment is an important step toward making WSJ’s social media strategy global. She will work closely with social media editors in the U.S. and editors in Asia to build and cultivate audiences across our English-language and local-language sites. She’ll also provide audience analysis and guide regional page managers in their efforts to position and promote news articles and graphics in ways that more deeply engage our online readers. She’ll remain in Hong Kong and continue to report to Asia Desk Chief Emily Veach, with dotted lines to Liz Heron, editor of emerging media for the WSJ and Dow Jones, and Asia Digital Editor Adam Najberg.

Maya joined Dow Jones in 2010 as an assistant web producer for WSJ.com’s Greater New York section. She moved to Hong Kong as an online editor in April 2012, where she managed our regional online editions and took on the added role of expanding our Asia House of the Day offerings. Under Maya’s guidance and through her smart selections, the Asia HOD slideshows have become wildly successful and are regularly one of the most-viewed features on both our English-language and local-language online editions. Maya is a true member of the digirati, writing for blogs, working on our live television shows in Asia and editing video in FinalCut. She began doing analytics and audience assessment for Asia earlier this year.

Maya received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2006. She worked briefly in health care before trading it all away for a career in journalism. She moved to New York in 2008 to attend the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, where she specialized in multimedia and arts & culture reporting. She is a superior athlete, who competed briefly on the UC Santa Cruz golf team, ran track and field in high school and has been a strong paddler for the two trophy-winning Dow Jones teams in the Sun Life Stanley Dragon Boat Championships in 2012 and 2013. She’s a self-confessed foodie, who also appreciates a fancy cocktail.