News world awaits WaPo chief’s decision
GROWING chatter that Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron could soon retire is complicating searches for several other high-profile top news jobs, including the quest for a new head of the Los Angeles Times, media sources say.
Baron has not made any official announcement, but talk continues to build that the acclaimed executive editor, who turned 66 in October, could unveil plans to exit shortly after the inauguration of Joe Biden as president on Jan. 20.
In an appearance on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Sunday morning, Baron did nothing to squash the speculation.
Asked near the end of the segment if he wanted to address the chatter, Baron — who has helmed the paper since shortly before its 2013 acquisition by Jeff Bezos — responded: “I can only share three letters, TBD. So I don’t really have any update for you.”
If Baron leaves, it will be the latest in a number of high-profile news slots that need to be filled, including at the LA Times, where a search is in high gear to find a replacement for executive editor Norm Pearlstine, who officially vacated the top spot last week and moved back to New York City.
Some insiders there think Pearlstine deliberately bowed out ahead of a new editor being named to give new urgency to the search and potentially to avoid competing with efforts to replace Baron.
There is also a big leadership vacuum atop Vox Media, where editorin-chief Lauren Williams announced in November plans to form a black-focused nonprofit news outlet. Vox co-founder and editor-at-large Ezra Klein at the same time said he was jumping ship to join The New York Times as an opinion columnist and podcaster, while co-founder Matthew Yglesias went to write for Substack.
HuffPost, which is being acquired by BuzzFeed, has also been without a top editor since Lydia Polgreen left for podcasting company Gimlet in early March.
But of all the jobs, sources say, The Washington Post would be considered the most plum position since it has become profitable under the deep-pocketed Bezos, founder of Amazon. The Beltway paper is also expanding internationally at a time when most media outlets are still reeling from pandemic-related ad woes and remain in cutback mode.
One name that has popped up as a possible candidate for both the WaPo and the LA Times is Kevin Merida, a senior VP at ESPN. Merida has been flagged as a potential replacement for Pearlstine in LA, as Media Ink reported last week. And he was previously The Washington Post’s managing editor responsible for national news and features as well as its universal news desk.
Merida played a key role in the paper’s digital transformation before jumping to ESPN in 2017. He was initially head of enterprise and investigations at ESPN and now is editor-in-chief of The Undefeated, reporting directly to the ESPN president. If he got the job, he’d be the first black to hold the job.
Merida could not be reached, but some sources said he’d prefer The Washington Post — if it were ever to open up.
A Washington Post spokesperson on Tuesday insisted that Baron has not made a decision, and therefore no official search is underway.
“The decision is 100 percent Marty’s, and he has not made it yet,” said the spokeswoman. “There is no search for a successor.”
“I think more important than my own future is the future of the Post,” Baron told CNN. “And as you see from our expansion, that’s been — that has been announced, there is overwhelming promise in the future of the Post.”
Joanna Coles — who once ran Marie Claire and its racier sister Cosmopolitan — is reinventing herself following her departure from Hearst.
In addition to Freeform show “The Bold Type,” loosely based on her days at Cosmo, Coles has joined the male-dominated world of buying firms using Special Acquisition Purpose Companies, or SPACs. She made an unlikely teaming with NHL New York Islanders’ majority owner Jon Ledecky in September to raise money through their Northern Star Acquisition Corporation SPAC. Last week they announced that the SPAC has agreed to acquire BarkBox, a subscription service for dog-lovers, in a deal that values the startup at $1.6 billion.
And the two are already on to the next one.
“Jon and I are looking to do another SPAC,” she told Media Ink of the financial instruments also commonly known as blank-check companies. SPACs are publicly traded shell companies that raise money to buy or merge with a real business that then takes over their ticker symbols, a sort of reverse IPO. She is chairman and CEO of Northern Star. Ledecky is the president and COO.
“As far as I know, I’m only the second woman to do an SPAC,” said Coles.