WSJ revamps video team management

Raju Narisetti, who oversees The Wall Street Journal’s online operations, sent out the following email announcement late Friday afternoon:

I wanted to share with everyone significant changes in our WSJ Live video team aimed at streamlining roles and responsibilities while creating new focus areas around training; quality enhancements; better and faster surfacing of video; outreach to non-WSJ partners; and budget management.

Effective immediately, Andy Regal is assuming leadership of the group. Reporting to him will be:

Wendy Bounds: Will retain her current YouTube and Lunch Break responsibilities while taking on a leadership role, under Andy, in our reconstituted Insights Team– journalists primarily managing staff-generated video journalism outside of Live Shows. This includes World Stream, In-Depth, Front Page, Big Interview, Boss Talks and Events staff, along with the formidable Lee Hawkins. Marshall Crook and his staff, as well as Jeff Bush are now part of this group.

Joanne Po: Will take full ownership of all our current and future Live shows and related staff, including talent. Under Joanne’s leadership, Live Shows have become a major source of significant, post-live views for individual segments, and leveraging shows for video-on-demand will remain a major focus area for her and her team. Mary Kissel on WSJ Opinion staff will work closely with Joanne as we re-imagine the Opinion Journal show with Paul Gigot’s guidance.

Chris Wall: In addition to his duties as the technology leader of WSJ Live, he will add Studio Technology management as well as Finance to his portfolio, working closely with Al Anspaugh to first streamline and then effectively manage our video news budget.

Nuna Charafeddine: Will now assume direct responsibility for all Operations across all WSJ Live teams. This is a significant ‘behind the scenes’ role but is vital for everything we do with video and our future growth.

Beckey Bright: She and a dedicated team will take on the responsibility of managing all video proposals; working to link, in a timely fashion, our video journalism with our articles, blogs and other journalism; and take on the new role of Partner Outreach under which we actively work with all WSJ Live content partners outside our own platform to promote our video journalism. Video pitches, from the newsroom, can continue to go to VideoProposal@dowjones.com.

Jill Kirschenbaum: In coming weeks, Jill will transition from her role as the main coordinator of Front Page videos into a new role, responsible for significantly ramping up video training as we create an integrated newsroom. As part of that role, she will also become the go-to person to help enhance quality of reporter-shot video while helping maintain our high journalistic standards.

In addition, we will shortly be naming Kristi Oloffson to a new, full-time video role at WSJ.com to focus exclusively on surfacing and showcasing video in a relevant and timely manner.

And Neal Mann will continue to primarily focus on driving WSJ Live’s Social Media strategy as part of the Social Media team led by Liz Heron, and also act as the Video Innovations Editor.

Wendy, Joanne, Chris, Nuna, Beckey and Jill will constitute the WSJ Live leadership team under Andy, along with Neal.

For those of you who haven’t yet met Andy, he has been with WSJ since May, initially as a consulting editor and, in the last three months, as head of our in-depth video team. Before joining us, Andy served as an executive producer at CNBC and MSNBC. He was part of the launch team at Court TV and was Vice President of original programming, in charge of developing new programming and overseeing long-form content. He was also VP of original programming at College Sports Television which was sold to CBS, and most recently a founding member of Big Lead Sports, a digital sports media company, serving as EVP of programming and content. Big Lead Sports was sold to Gannett earlier this year.

A WSJ Live organization chart that reflects all these changes is attached, for internal use. The entire WSJ Live team can be reached via a new group email: WSJVideoTeam@dowjones.com

While there is much work to be done in the coming days and weeks, please join me in congratulating Andy, Wendy, Joanne, Chris, Nuna, Beckey and Jill, and wishing them continued success in building on the great success story that WSJ Live has been in our newsroom and beyond.