After reports earlier this month that Mashable laid off at least two dozen editorial staffers, the digital news company will continue providing “well-reported, original stories, analysis, reviews and features,” new editor in chief Greg Gittrich pledged in an external memo today:
We’ll cover big breaking news and important issues through the lens of our core sections, using our expertise in those areas to find unique angles, fascinating characters, and exclusive information. We’ll also use our real-time news team to report on significant stories unfolding across social media. We’re expanding the real-time team and adding video and visual storytelling capabilities across all core areas of coverage.
Absent from Mashable’s news report will be “general interest news and broad coverage of the world,” which accounts for the company’s recent decision to pare back its international and political coverage.
In his memo, Gittrich also expounded on several outstanding questions about the trajectory of Mashable’s news operation, addressing Mashable’s editorial voice, the interplay between Mashable’s editorial and business-side and the continuing investment in video.
In sum, Gittrich noted that news-side staffers will retain their independence from advertising duties and called the editorial ethos of the site “informed, entertaining and optimistic.” Under Gittrich, the company has consolidated its editorial, audience development and social divisions under one operation, which also houses its video operation.
Gittrich, who was previously the top editorial staffer at Vocativ, says Mashable will make further investments in video and “incorporate animation, graphics, and illustrations” to its visual coverage.
And through it all, we’ll tell great stories: stories that inform and entertain, stories that explore how technology creates and shapes today’s culture, and stories that are so unique they only can be told by Mashable.
Mashable reportedly laid off about 30 staffers earlier this month. Among the staffers that left were Editor-in-Chief Jim Roberts, Business Editor Heidi Moore, Politics Editor Juana Summers and Chief Revenue Officer Seth Rogin.
