And Now For Something Completely Different, Leadership Changes

As you may have read, our beloved co-editor Eric Eldon is moving on to do other things. Clearly Eldon will leave a huge hole, and therefore we’re going to be making a couple of editorial changes to make sure TechCrunch meets 2014 staffed up for greatness.

Our esteemed Senior Editor Leena Rao will become Managing Editor as part of these changes. The force behind “Ask A VC,” Rao has become a fixture in the Silicon Valley community since she moved back from Chicago to San Francisco. She will be instrumental in making sure TechCrunch stays true to its roots as it grapples with an increasingly competitive news cycle.

Our Senior Editor Matthew Panzarino, will be joining me as TechCrunch co-editor, because not only is one the loneliest number, but because managing the most influential startup publication on the planet is really a two-person job.

Panzarino is a photographer by trade, who got interested in technology when he began working in a local electronic store, in order to support his photo business. He got the blogging bug and decided to parlay his electronics knowledge into an aptly named iPhone site, The iPhone Guru, which had 150k unique visitors at its height. Thinking he could probably do this professionally, he then applied for a job at The Next Web where he became Managing Editor in no time flat.

At The Next Web he consistently broke Apple and Twitter news, and wrote the kind of stories we wished were on TechCrunch, so here he is.  For the past six months at TechCrunch, he’s assigned news in addition to penning insightful pieces like “Why Do People Keep Giving Foursquare Money?” and “Yahoo Girds Its Loins For The Battle Over Your Home Screen.”

There was a moment in time when every one in the tech news hustle wanted Panzarino (@Panzer) on their team and we got him. Big time.

Goodbye, old friend, and welcome, co-leader.