WSJ’s Simons hired as Time executive editor

Time Editor-in-Chief and CEO Edward Felsenthal and deputy editor Sam Jacobs sent the following note to staff Tuesday.

Team TIME,

We are happy to announce that John Simons joins TIME as Executive Editor on March 1. John will oversee business, technology and nation coverage. In this new role, John joins the editorial leadership team helping guide our overall strategy and coverage across all platforms.

John comes to us from The Wall Street Journal where he was most recently deputy health and science editor and bureau chief for health business. Prior to that, he was based in the WSJ’s London bureau guiding energy coverage. He brings to TIME 28 years of newsroom experience across digital, print, new and legacy media. As an editor and manager at the WSJ, the Associated Press, Black Enterprise and IBT/Newsweek, John has led coverage of technology, media, personal finance, corporate diversity and management in addition to health, science and energy. As a writer and reporter at Fortune, the WSJ and U.S. News & World Report earlier in his career, he covered the drug and biotech industries, immigration, technology and economic policy.

Throughout his career, John has built a reputation as a talented story editor, ambitious driver of coverage and newsroom mentor. We are fortunate that he will also be leading business coverage, one of our biggest opportunities since leaving Time Inc. With companies playing a broader role in society, this is an important moment for TIME to build on its rich tradition of business coverage. John will work with our journalists around the globe to report on our most critical themes–equality, leadership, rebuilding, sustainability–through the lens of business. We’re eager for many of you who are already covering the intersection of business and your own areas of coverage to participate in this effort.

A graduate of Northeastern University, John is from Stamford, Conn. and lives in currently snow-covered Montclair, N.J. with his wife and daughter.

More than 1,000 people applied for this position–a testament to the enormous interest in the role as well as the impression that John left on us and the hiring committee. Please join in welcoming John to TIME.