Vocativ, a news startup dedicated to mining the deep Web for story ideas, announced Tuesday the hiring of Jamie Tarabay as part of an ongoing staff increase.
In a memo to staff, Vocativ Chief Content Officer Gregory Gittrich also announced the addition of Jessica Bennett to the position of contributing editor.
Tarabay, who is currently a senior staff writer at Al Jazeera America, will contribute to Vocativ’s coverage of national security reporting and enterprise projects, according to the memo. Before coming to Al Jazeera America, Tarabay was a contributing editor at Atlantic Media, Baghdad bureau chief for NPR and a reporter with The Associated Press. She received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in 2007 in international reporting for her coverage of the Iraq War.
Bennett, a founding editor of Storyboard, is also a columnist at Time.com and a contributor to The New York Times, Gittrich writes. At Vocativ, she will develop the startup’s gender and culture unit and produce multimedia projects.
The hires correspond to beat coverage priorities Gittrich outlined earlier this month when he announced the appointment of Alex Koppelman to the position of editorial director. Vocativ will focus its efforts on covering six subjects: national security, technology, gender, culture, criminal justice and real-time news. Each coverage team will include journalists with a variety of experience in different disciplines, including writing, video, data analysis and audience development. Vocativ’s coverage specialty is the deep Web, the stretches of the Internet that are not indexed by search engines.
In January, Vocativ told Poynter it planned to grow its staff between 25 and 30 percent this year. The expansion is being funded by founder Mati Kochavi and a small group of investors.
Here’s the memo:
Hello everyone,
We have two more exciting additions to our team.
Jamie Tarabay is joining Vocativ as a senior editor. Jamie is insightful, competitive, brave, and highly experienced. She excels at illuminating the human side of important stories and has an extraordinary breadth of reporting and editing experience, covering foreign affairs, politics, national security, conflict, and culture. Jamie has held senior editorial positions at NPR, where she was Baghdad Bureau Chief; the National Journal; the Associated Press; and Al Jazeera America, where she has been a senior writer. Jamie will work with Alex to help us drive our daily coverage, national security reporting, and enterprise projects.
Jamie’s reporting on the Iraq war for NPR received the Alfred I duPont – Columbia University Award. She also served as domestic correspondent for NPR, covering the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the rise of the Tea Party. At the National Journal, she ran national security, foreign affairs, and White House coverage. For the past 15 years, she has reported from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the U.S. Jamie starts at Vocativ on March 9.
Jessica Bennett is joining us as a contributing editor. Jessica is a talented and creative writer and editor with a unique voice she brings to every project. She is a true multimedia journalist who embraces every aspect of digital storytelling. Jessica will help us develop our gender and culture unit and will produce engaging multimedia projects for Vocativ.
As founding editor of Tumblr’s journalism initiative, Storyboard, Jessica launched and ran their multimedia newsroom. Her team produced award-winning documentary shorts and made live-GIFing an artform. She’s a columnist at Time.com, a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and a contributing editor for special projects at Lean In, the foundation founded by Sheryl Sandberg. A former senior editor at Newsweek, she joins us next week.
Please welcome Jamie and Jess to the team.
I’d also like to thank everyone who was involved in our data-driven coverage of the Oscars. Our analysis of Academy Award speeches – revealing who gets thanked more than God on stage – was picked up by the New York Times, Good Morning America, the TODAY show, NBC’s Nightly News, Vulture, the Drudge Report, FiveThirtyEight, Entertainment Weekly, The Wrap, and many others.
Greg
