• Nico Pitney To Replace Jai Singh As AOL HuffPo's Managing Editor

    Mg Siegler

    MG Siegler is a general partner at Google Ventures and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. Previously, MG was a general partner at CrunchFund. And before TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked... → Learn More

    Monday, May 2nd, 2011

    Earlier tonight, Yahoo announced that they grabbed one from our side to be the new Editor in Chief of their Yahoo Media Network: Jai Singh. Singh had been the Executive Editor at Huffington Post (and more recently, AOL HuffPo) for the past two years, where he helped shaped the company into the news and information juggernaut that it has become. Now we know who his replacement will be: Nico Pitney.

    Pitney was previously the Executive Editor of The Huffington Post, having risen through the ranks after serving as the Politics Editor during the 2008 Presidential campaign (and eventually becoming the National Editor and Washington Bureau Chief). Below, find Arianna Huffington’s brief memo on the move (meeting place and time redacted in case of weirdos lurking around the NYT office):

    I’m delighted to announce that Nico will become the Managing Editor of The Huffington Post Media Group. Jai and I have been talking for some time about his desire to return home to California and his family. We are very grateful to him for his great work and wish him all the best in his next adventure. So please join me at XXXXX today in the XXXXXX to raise a glass to Nico and say farewell to Jai.

    Arianna

    In the release announcing the Singh hire, Yahoo made an even bigger deal about “its largest traffic numbers for a single event”. No, it wasn’t the Bin Laden death — it was the royal wedding. Says Yahoo:

    Preliminary internal data shows that Yahoo! sites serving Royal Wedding content drove 400 million page views on Friday, slightly higher than the traffic levels experienced following the Japan earthquake.

    Seems like that news and the major new hire should have had their own separate releases, no?

    Company: Huffington Post
    Launch Date: May 9, 2005
    Funding: $37M

    The Huffington Post is a leading online news source founded by Arianna Huffington, Ken Lerer, and Jonah Peretti. Contributors include more than 3,000 bloggers—from politicians and celebrities to academics and policy experts—who contribute in real-time on a wide-range of topics. The site started as a politics blog, but now covers more than 20 categories, including media, business, entertainment, living, style, sustainable “green” living, world news, technology, nonprofits, college life, and comedy. It began launching local versions in 2008,...

    → Learn more
    Company: Yahoo!
    Website: yahoo.com
    Launch Date: January 1, 1994
    IPO: December 4, 1996, Nasdaq:YHOO

    Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services. Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. To users, the Company provides owned and operated online properties and services (Yahoo! Properties, Offerings, or Owned and Operated sites). Yahoo! also extends its marketing platform and access to Internet users beyond Yahoo! Properties through its distribution network...

    → Learn more