My media news

Hey friends,

I just wanted to give you a quick update on what I've been up to, and an apology for the radio silence on this list!

I left The Times in January to begin work on starting a new global news organization with Justin Smith, the former CEO of Bloomberg Media. He and I have been heads-down since then putting the pieces into place, and have brought on a few other key people to our team: Caitlin Roman, was vice president of product at The Athletic and will head up our product team; and Steve Clemons, a singular force in Washington's news ecosystem who I'll be working with to create live journalism there and around the world.

Today's news: We've brought on the current Reuters executive editor Gina Chua, a truly great global journalist who did stints as editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and of the Wall Street Journal Asia, to be my partner in building out the newsroom.

We're hoping to build a publication that solves some of the problems that a lot of us have with news — the sense of being totally overwhelmed by the volume of content, and yet also not being able to find the clear voice you're looking for.  And I'm excited to be turning soon to trying to recruit some of the best reporters and editors around to join us. I hope you don't mind if I send the occasional update here before this list returns to its regularly scheduled programing, which is scoops :).

Ben