NY Mag, Yahoo, Mediaite, CNN, and Gawker Media: A Manic Monday’s Media Moves

Remember, remember, the 15th of November. The world of media gigs spins, and with it, our heads. How are New York Magazine, Mediaite, Business Insider, CNN, and Gawker Media intricately tied together today? If you get motion sickness easily, well, you probably shouldn’t be reading this on a moving vehicle. Press Clips, Day 21, Manic Monday Media Moves Madness Edition, here we go. CORRECTION/UPDATED.

So, today’s Media Moves look like this:

Edmund Lee at AdAge breaks the news that contributing New York editor Will Leitch goes to Yahoo to write about movies. Leitch confirms on his blog. Meanwhile, Yahoo reports that top-notch media reporter Steve Krakauer of Mediaite is hired by CNN to work on Piers Morgan’s new show.

Now, why are these such insane, head-spinning moves? They say a lot about where power is shifting right now:

• New York also lost senior web editor Jessica Coen to Gawker Media earlier this year, as she went on to be editor-in-chief of Gawker Media ladysite Jezebel, three years after leaving the top spot at Gawker.com.
• This doesn’t go without mentioning New York web editor Nick Catucci going to RollingStone.com, New York‘s Vulture editor Mark Graham leaving in March to go to MTV Networks, or New York‘s long time managing editor Hugo Lindgren going to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, then The New York Times Magazine.
• And as documented by John Koblin in Women’s Wear Daily last week, New York‘s editorial director Lauren Kern left recently to go work for Lindgren at the Times Magazine.
• We also heard an unconfirmed rumor that Moss tried to hire a guy named Greg Vies away from The New Republic to be a front-of-book editor, but he was interrupted when Lindgren poached him from Moss’ hiring pool to be his front-of-book editor at the Times Magazine.
• Yahoo recently lost John Cook back to Gawker, the same company Leitch once worked as the founding editor of Deadspin. That said, they still have two more high-profile Gawker employees in addition to Leitch, Brett Michael Dykes, former Gawker.com night editor, and Mark Lisanti, the well-regarded former Defamer.com editor.
• Even more, Krakauer’s move out of Mediaite is the second major departure the company’s seen in less than a month. Glynnis MacNicol left Mediaite last month to go work for Business Insider…
• …where Joe Pompeo, who wrote today’s report on Krakauer, left. To go work — where else? — at Yahoo.
• Finally, today Mediaite announced the hiring of Emmy-winning reporter Mark Joyella, who’s going to be reporting to Mediaite’s managing editor Colby Hall.

Conclusions?

1. New York Magazine is losing hiring and retention power. Chalk this up to Lindgren’s departure — and the length of time it was percolating for — and the media economy thawing out.
2. Gawker Media editors remain strong forces in the media job market, but aren’t immune to returning to the roost from more mainstream gigs. Don’t forget that in addition to Cook and Coen, Joel Johnson also returned to Gizmodo recently in an Editor-at-Large position basically crafted for him, and Richard Lawson returned to Gawker.com last year from a stint at TV Guide‘s website.
3. Mediaite’s trying to keep up with big-name turnaround by bringing on big names despite new hires lacking significant online reporting experience. Do with that what you will, but it doesn’t sound like a completely sound strategy, does it? Is Joyella gonna be able to keep up with the SEO-sharpshooting Mediaite editors have constantly been given as operating dictums? You probably could’ve scored two young, hungry bloggers who can pump out 14 posts a day for one Joyella, who doesn’t seem to be the kind of guy with an appetite for that kind of thing. We’ll see how it plays out.

Anyway, if your head’s spinning, it should be. It’s getting harder and harder to keep track of who’s going where, and What It All Means, if anything at all (which I’m naturally willing to suggest it does; prove me wrong). One thing’s for sure, though:

The Great Thaw is Real.

CORRECTION/UPDATE: An earlier draft of this post noted that Will Leitch was leaving NY Mag unequivocally. That was an oversight. He’ll still be contributing to New York. Regret the error, and apologies. That said, doesn’t that put Leitch in direct competition with NYM? I also neglected to mention Edith Zimmerman leaving NYM’s Vulture for The Hairpin – making her another NYM writer who left to go write for a ladyblog – owned by The Awl, run by two Gawker Media alums, Alex Balk and Choire Sicha. Sicha also (like Coen, Johnson, Lawson, and Cook) at one point returned for a second run with the company. Also, former Vulture editor Mark Graham was another Gawker Media alum on the move, as he, too, ran Defamer at one point.

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We’re not done yet, today. More later. As always, thank you for your continued support of Press Clips.