Boston Globe digital advisor David Skok has been named managing editor for digital at the publication, Globe editor Brian McGrory told staffers in a memo Tuesday.
Skok’s new title comes with the responsibility of being general manager of Globe.com, a duty that will put him in charge of the site’s team of designers, engineers and product managers, according to the memo.
This latest announcement continues Skok’s rise during his tenure at the Globe, which began when he took the digital adviser job in December 2013. In July, Andrew Perlmutter, an executive vice president at Boston Globe Media Partners, announced that Skok had been selected selected to lead BostonGlobe.com. Before coming to the Globe, Skok was digital director of Global News, a Shaw Communications property.
In an effort to emphasize its Web offerings, The Boston Globe recently moved its morning and afternoon meetings up and hired several digital-first writers, according to a memo obtained by Northeastern University professor Dan Kennedy.
Here’s the announcement:
Hey all,
We all hoped that great things would happen when David Skok arrived in this newsroom some 15 months ago, the first truly digital native to take up residence in one of our glass offices. The challenges ahead were enormous: The separation of our two websites; the launching of vertical sites; the transition from a paywall to a meter on globe.com; the need to recruit new talent and the oversight of the extraordinary digital talent already in place.
Ever since, David, looking like he’s another missed meal away from vanishing, has offered Chris and me a weekly one-sheet progress report filled with color-coded highlights, arrows, and metrics to describe the blizzard of initiatives he’s undertaken. I’ll simplify it here. We’ve got a sharper, more urgent website, an ever more nimble team of product specialists and engineers working hand-in-hand with the newsroom, and infinitely more creativity in our daily approach, including newsletters, verticals, and socially native reporting. All of this has led to significant growth in online advertising revenue, readership, and subscriptions, with plenty of room to take it even higher.
All of which validates my intention all along, that David would become the Globe’s managing editor for digital. And he will, effective immediately, a great move for him, an even better move for our news organization.
But what makes this announcement all the better are the impressive intangibles that David has brought to his work thus far, and what we’ll see even more of going forward. David, we’ve all learned, may be able to proselytize on the importance of the article page, a/b testing, and earlier filing. But what we’ve also learned is that he carries a set of values that reflect the absolute best traditions of our news organization. To David, expert and engaging story-telling and unflinching accountability reporting are the most vital parts of our business – whether on the printed page or on screens. I can’t tell you how many times he’s come into my office, bleary-eyed but excited, to say that ultimately it’s simply great journalism that drives our digital success.
For anyone else, the Managing editor/digital title would be more than enough. In David’s case, we figured we could and would throw even more work his way. So we’ve also made him the general manager of globe.com, In this capacity, he leads a team of designers, engineers, and product managers, dedicated to growing our audience, improving our advertising products, adding to our subscriber-base, and staying at the forefront of innovation in digital news. Our site, with David’s broad oversight and Jason and his team heading editorial, could not possibly be in better hands.
Please take a moment to congratulate David on this key move.
Brian
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