WSJ shuffles beats on corporate team

Jamie Heller, the business editor at The Wall Street Journal, sent out the following announcement on Monday:

Hello.

I’m excited to share news of changes on the corp team.

Eliot Brown, known for his dominant coverage of WeWork, is expanding his brief to include other giant startups in the so-called sharing economy: Uber, Lyft and Airbnb. Already, Eliot has brought his financial smarts to our Lyft reporting, contributing terrific work on the recent IPO. Eliot has covered venture capital and startups since joining the San Francisco tech team about two years ago, and before that worked on our real estate team in New York. His scoop last year on Google’s expansion in New York represented the best of both beats.

Dana Mattioli is our new Amazon reporter. Dana’s move to our tech bureau follows an extraordinary six-year run on the M&A beat. Often working with colleagues in our deals group or biz/finance reporters world-wide, Dana has delivered a relentless string of exclusives including on some of the biggest and most-important deals in recent years, such as CVS/Aetna, Shell/BG and Berkshire Hathaway/Precision Castparts. She has also written leders on the beat, including on Amazon’s impact on dealmaking. Before joining the M&A team, she covered retail and distinguished the Journal with her work on Kodak, JCPenney and Orbitz.

Ben Mullin, in our Media & Marketing bureau, is taking on a bigger role in TV and corporate-media coverage. He is now the lead reporter on CBS, Viacom and Discovery, as well as ESPN and parts of WarnerMedia. Ben has gotten off to a fast start in entertainment coverage, already landing scoops with colleagues on Endeavor’s IPO plans and concerns at WarnerMedia over gender diversity. Ben has been covering digital publishing, and we expect he will continue to unearth news in that realm, as he did recently on the sale of Gizmodo and the appointment of a new Politico editor. He also has distinguished himself with some important enterprise with colleagues on Univision and Vice.

Lillian Rizzo is joining the Media & Marketing bureau as a cable industry reporter. Lillian has done outstanding work on the Journal’s private equity and bankruptcy pro squads, delivering scoops with colleagues on the Chapter 11 preparations of Sears,  Toys ‘R’ US and Gymboree, among others. She partnered with Gretchen Morgenson on a memorable Toys r Us leder. Lillian will take over a TV & broadband distribution beat that includes cable operators such as Comcast and Charter as well as TV station groups such as Sinclair. She also will help advance the bureau’s coverage of media deals.

R.T. Watson has joined our Los Angeles bureau, covering Hollywood along with Erich Schwartzel. R.T. came to us from Bloomberg, where he worked out of Rio de Janeiro covering commodities along with environmental disasters and other major news. His career in journalism started with the Hollywood Reporter and Reuters in Los Angeles, and he is excited to be returning to the city.

New Opening: We also have posted a new opening, covering energy from London. The job involves coverage of some of the world’s biggest energy companies, as well as trends and policy debates around energy. It reports to John Simons. If you are interested or know someone who might be, please contact him.

As always, if you want to learn more about opportunities in corp broadly, please reach out to me.