Poynter’s news editor, Andrew Beaujon, announced to staff Friday that he’s leaving for Washingtonian, where he’ll be a senior editor.
“I’m grateful that Poynter gave me a shot as a media blogger,” Beaujon said. “I’ve loved my time here and care deeply about my coworkers. I have grown a lot in this job and learned so much.”
Beaujon came to Poynter in 2012 and he has most proudly worked as a media blogger in that time. At the Washingtonian, Beaujon will return to local news.
“Anyone who knows me knows I love doing local news, especially news about the D.C. area,” he said. “And I’m very excited to finally work with Mike Schaffer, who I’ve admired for a long time, at a publication I grew up reading.”
At Washingtonian, he’ll work on the magazine’s digital strategy, he said, and still write about the media.
“I look forward to working in an office with other humans and relearning how to dress myself before I begin work,” he said. “For the first few weeks, I suggest my new coworkers IM me rather than speak to me directly, just so I don’t freak out.”
Here’s the email announcement Washingtonian sent out about the news:
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 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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