By Jack Limpert
Two days ago a City Paper Mafia Update said Jack Shafer was leaving Reuters—included was background on how former editors of the Washington City Paper have created almost a monopoly on media writing.
Today it was announced that Andrew Beaujon, Poynter’s media writer and a former City Paper managing editor, is joining The Washingtonian as a senior editor to cover local media and supervise the magazine’s website. Making the announcement was Washingtonian editor Michael Schaffer, also a former editor of the City Paper. Here’s what Schaffer said:
Comrades
I wanted to let you know I made a hire today. Andrew Beaujon, who currently runs Poynter’s Mediawire site, will join Washingtonian in mid December as a senior editor.
This is great news. Andrew has been copy chief at Spin magazine and an editor at Washington City Paper, wrote a book on Christian rock, and was part of the launch team for the innovative local-news startup TBD.com. A veteran of the local music scene—he helped start Teen Beat records while he was at Wakefield High in Arlington—he built TBD’s local arts/entertainment newsletter while getting a close-up view of both the promise and the pitfalls of the digital space.
We’ve never worked together, though when I worked at a paper he’d recently left, staff still spoke of Andrew in reverent terms. So did the references I checked this month, who described him as collegial, funny, whip-smart, and a great leader.
At Washingtonian, Andrew is going to do two things:
One, he’s going to help lead web efforts on the edit side: Finding subject areas to rule, coming up with plans to dominate the daily conversations, upping our social-media game and looking for new ways to both make our long-gestating service/feature pieces find a bigger audience online and infuse the print book with the crackling energy of our website.
Two, he’s going to keep doing some of what he’s been up to at Poynter: newsy, savvy coverage of the local media, which for 30 years has been a big piece of what Washingtonian does.
Andrew lives in Alexandria with his wife, Ewa, and their two sons. At Poynter, he’s been working out of his house, and I suspect having colleagues is going to be one of the smaller upsides of his new gig. I hope you’ll all give him a warm welcome.
mike
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