Andrew Golis

Since everyone in the world is either publishing or intentionally leaking their end of the year internal memos, I figured I’d do the same. To my own blog.

In fact, it’s not just the end of one year and beginning of another. Today is also the six month anniversary of the launch of our first blog at Yahoo! News, The Upshot.

Below is a note I sent my team to commemorate the occasion. Chris in the memo is Chris Lehmann. Jennifer and David are Jennifer Karmon and David Caplan. Holly, Michael, Brett, Zack, Liz, John, Rachel, and Joe are Holly Bailey, Michael Calderone, Brett Michael Dykes, Zachary Roth, Liz Goodwin, John Cook, Rachel Hartman, and Joe Pompeo.

—— Forwarded Message
From: Andrew Golis
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 11:54:18 -0800
Subject: Happy six months

Team,

Six months ago this week, we launched The Upshot. A month and a half ago, we expanded the network and launched The Ticket, The Lookout, and The Cutline.

In the coming days and weeks Chris and I will be laying out goals for 2011. But, in celebration of our first half-birthday, I wanted to step back from the relentless chirping of instant messenger to look back at what we’ve accomplished so far.

You already know the numbers have been huge. About 2,700 blog posts, generating over 450 million pageviews, seen by 30 million readers each month, adding up to 1.3 billion minutes of time spent and all of the the advertising revenue that comes along with that. While Yahoo! is not without its challenges, the media business is good and the blogs perform better than any comparable content across every metric.

At some level, though, that’s the easy part.

While it can’t be captured easily with a graph or spreadsheet, I think our biggest accomplishment has been the creation, out of thin air, of an editorial culture that is fast, fair, and smart.

Chris’s leadership here, as you all know, has been essential. Under his guidance, we’re building blogs that, as Chris wrote in November, are reminiscent of “open-invitation town meetings” and “convey the excitement of that big, moving-target undertaking.” Your work is welcoming, blunt, and informed; and there’s a lot of it. And we produce it while avoiding the maladies that plague so much modern journalism: “on the one hand on the other” laziness, snarky nihilism, opaque insiderdom.

To pull that off, we’ve built internal systems — meetings, memos, IM chats — that allow you all to thrive while keeping our work reliable and our voice consistent. Frankly, the work Chris, Jennifer, and David did in December to grow into a process that moves over 30 blog posts through edits and copy edits each day (and the work they do to push that system forward day in and day out) is simply awesome.

And we’ve broken news. A lot of it.

Holly was the first to layout the interrelated nature of the GOP’s shadow campaign infrastructure (http://yhoo.it/a5J3oH). Michael’s coverage of the term “Ground Zero Mosque” being used by mainstream media changed editorial policies at the AP (http://yhoo.it/cLusyi) and the WSJ (http://yhoo.it/9PXPfg). Brett exposed the Obama Administration’s efforts to stage a presidential visit to an oil spill site at Grand Isle (http://yhoo.it/bHNAYO). Zack disturbed us all with his report on the nation’s nuclear weapons program undergoing an existential crisis (http://yhoo.it/9CkGF8). Liz saw the national trend in anti-mosque protests before the New York Times or AP (http://yhoo.it/d3HbSI). John got the Pentagon to reopen an investigation into employees with Top Secret clearance viewing child pornography (http://yhoo.it/9otzOd). Rachel was the first to have Tom Tancredo on the phone making the threats that led to his run for CO governor (http://yhoo.it/cJWdrA). Joe may as well have camped out on Tina Brown’s lawn he’s so exhaustively led us through the Newsweek/Daily Beast convergence (http://yhoo.it/cPYKuN).

And that’s just a sample.

At the same time, we’ve explained complicated issues to millions: the deficit (http://yhoo.it/bNg86w), net neutrality (http://yhoo.it/dJA4rN), the conflict in Korea (http://yhoo.it/elLZzH), the legal battle over health care reform (http://yhoo.it/f2MyqV), and much more.

The result of all of this work is a growing reputation for excellence. I’m hearing more every day of journalists in newsrooms across the country at organizations we all respect who are watching our work closely and, as a result, citing it in their own work. You name it, and they’ve linked to us: NYT, WSJ, The Guardian, Reuters, WaPo, HuffPo, The Daily Beast, Politico, Slate, Drudge, Gawker, Fox, and on and on.

And six months ago, we didn’t exist.

In other words, we’ve lived up to the awesome responsibility that comes along with having the audience and resources Yahoo! has given us. And we should be proud of that.

That was the first six months. Now for the next.

Thanks for all your work,

Andrew

—— End of Forwarded Message

We’re looking for two new bloggy thoroughbreds to join the stable of amazing reporter/bloggers we’re building at The Upshot.

Sadly, John Cook is heading back to Gawker. John’s a brilliant reporter, but he decided that he prefers the license Gawker gave him to add his opinions into his reporting to the scale and credibility Yahoo! News could offer. We’ll miss him, but we’ll still enjoy reading him over there, I’m sure.

The good news is, this means there’s not one but two spots open on the masthead of what is already the most-read news blog in the country.

The Senior National Affairs Reporter has to be able to both narrate the day’s national news in short bursts and dive deep on exclusive reporting projects. That means we need someone with both serious reporting and serious blogging chops; someone who has a broad knowledge base on issues as varied as business and crime and the ability to develop sources and expertise quickly. Only those with more than 5 years of journalism experience will be considered.

We’re also looking for someone to fill a new position: Night Blogger. As The Upshot and eventually the Yahoo! News blog network expands, we want to make sure we’re ready to cover the news whenever it breaks. To keep us up late and get us moving early, we’re looking for a generalist news blogger who can aggregate in the evenings and help get us ready to start each day. We need someone who can can write clean, tight, accessible posts that span The Upshot’s three beats (national affairs, politics and media) and work from about 5 pm to 2 am each weekday. This person will need especially to understand and be ready to aggregate from primetime television. Only those with more than 3 years of journalism experience will be considered.

Only those with a deep understanding of online media will be considered for either position and the ability to juggle email, IM, Twitter, TV and/or phone calls while writing is essential.

Both bloggers will be paid according to experience. People of color and women are strongly encouraged to apply.

To apply, send a resume, a brief cover letter, a few links to writing samples, and two references to golis at yahoo dash inc dot com. Folks inquiring about or applying for either position should title their emails “Senior National Affairs job” or “Night Blogger job.”

Many apologies for the drop-off of links in the past few weeks, something’s broken in delicious’s auto-post feature and I’m working on fixing it. In the meantime, you can follow my links here or follow me on Twitter to get links and chatter.

Happy New Year!

Looking for someone smarter than me to work with me on my new adventure.

Please pass this one to your friends, other email lists, etc.  I’m looking to fill this job ASAP, so if you’re interested please don’t hesitate to contact me.

—-

Deputy Editor for Yahoo News Blogs

Looking for an experienced, agile, details-oriented blog editor to manage a team of professional bloggers. Working with the Editor, this person will oversee story selection and creation of original reporting and curation for the largest news audience on the web.

The ideal candidate has extensive online media experience (blog experience preferred), experience managing reporters and the ability to create media that appeals to both expert and popular audiences.

This person must have knowledge of and interaction with outside entities, especially those in the news blogosphere, and comfort interfacing with other parts of Yahoo’s organization, especially Yahoo’s homepage.

Responsibilities:
* Providing oversight to ensure that blogs are following style, meeting standards and serving our audience
* Generating, developing and executing content ideas and strategies
* Monitoring Yahoo! and the Web at-large for story and source material
* Fielding and attracting quality tips and inquiries from editors, PR types and outside entities
* Providing photo assistance and guidance with regard to gathering, editing and crediting
* Tracking, analyzing and driving results

Requirements:
* Five-plus years experience in online media, experience in blogging specifically is a plus
* Exceptional copyediting skills and attention to detail
* Strong grammar and communication skills and command of language
* Familiarity with SEO, RSS, Twitter, Facebook and other social media
* Basic HTML and Photoshop skills, experience with blog publishing and content management systems

For those of you who accidentally turned off your Google alert on my name, a quick round-up of the pick-up of my announcement on Wednesday that I’m heading to Yahoo:

• Yahoo! To Come Full Circle With News Link Curation Site – ReadWriteWeb
• Yahoo Will Launch a New News Blog – GigaOm
• TPM’s Golis heads to Yahoo – Politico
• Is Yahoo Hatching a HuffPo Clone? – Media Post
• TPM ‘s Dep. Publisher to Yahoo – FishBowlDC
• Yahoo News to launch new blog with aim of entering ‘news link economy’ – Journalism.co.uk
• Yahoo To Launch Political News Blog (YHOO) – Silicon Alley Insider
• Rise Of A New Empire – Attackerman
• Talking Points Memo’s Andrew Golis To Head Up New Political Blog For Yahoo – PaidContent
• Talking Points Memo Deputy Publisher to Bring Yahoo News ‘Into the Link Economy’ – BayNewser
  

Thanks for caring folks!  Now back to your regularly scheduled programing of links about other things more interesting and less me-y.

Some big, and bittersweet, news for ya: at the end of next week I’m going to be leaving TPM, my home for the last three years.

I’ve accepted an amazing offer from Yahoo to build, staff and run a new news blog. It will be a combination of curation and original reporting, with gregarious linking and sharp, smart writing. In other words, for the folks who read this site for meta journalism news, I’m going to be building a team to bring the most popular news site in the United States into the news link economy.

Needless to say, only an opportunity this intriguing could have possibly lured me away from TPM. My love for the company, for Josh, and for the team he’s built isn’t something that will ever go away. I’ll always be thankful to Josh for the opportunities he’s given me and proud to have contributed to building the site into what it’s become (when I started there, it looked like this). I’m sure TPM will remain a cutting edge producer of engaging, important journalism for years to come.

I’ll have more to say about the Yahoo project as things develop in the weeks to come. The blog’s name and the brilliant writers who will grace its pageviews are TBD. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have ideas for either.

In the meantime, if you always thought “I could do Andrew’s job way better than he does,” I highly recommend you apply for one of the two new job opening’s on TPM’s publishing staff: Deputy Publisher/Publisher and Social Media & Publicity Associate. Details are here.

Late update: A clarification: my use of the word “site” instead of “blog” made some folks think this would be a new, independent website for Yahoo. Thankfully, it won’t be, and will live at Yahoo News and benefit from the enormous audience and resources they’ve already built up (hence the exciting “bring the most popular news site in the United States into the news link economy” part). Apologies for the confusion.

Later update: I need name ideas!

Went on GritTV again yesterday to discuss the day’s news with Michael Musto of the Village Voice and and Esther Armah of WBAI.  Enjoy.

Went on the wonderful GritTv yesterday to discuss the week in news:

A little after the four minute mark:

A quick point related to my Tuesday post “The New York Times and the rules of war.“  When I write that part of the Times’ problem is that they developed “a journalistic ethos of detachment,” I’m not arguing that The Times needs to drop their aspirations to objectivity.

Rather, I’m arguing that they should stop thinking objectivity and detachment are the same thing.  They can aspire to not favoring conservative or ideological argument and aggressively engage simultaneously.

Look at what Campbell Brown is trying to do.  Sounding like a blogger, she’s dismissing the false objectivity of “equal time,” if the arguments being reported on aren’t equally based in fact.  She’s styling herself as someone who’s willing to call bullshit when she sees it (exhibit A: taking apart Tucker Bounds when he absurdly tried to defend Sarah Palin’s national security cred). And, unlike The Times, she’s doesn’t cowardly use euphemisms when pointing out race-baiting. She’s describing reality, without biasing any ideology, as she clearly as she can. Not standing back from it to avoid controversy.

The result? She’s doing her journalistic duty and creating political problems for people who lie and smear and going viral in the process.

Nothing she’s done has actually been liberal or conservative. In this case McCain/Palin have just been in more need of truth-squading. But traditionally, she’d be backed down by CNN execs cowed by political pressure from the Right and the prospect of losing the appearance of objectivity. But so far, probably because it’s been good for business, she’s pushing ahead.

The New York Times, naturally, ran a story claiming she was “tacking toward commentary.” They’d be wise to watch her and realize that distinguishing between lies and falsehoods and forcing the liars to pay a political price isn’t “commentary,” it’s just good, engaged, journalism.