Comings and Goings

See where working on one of these new fangled, throwing-standards-to-the-wind new media outlets will get you?

In September, we told you that Peter Ha, former news editor of Michael Arrington's CrunchGear, moved to TIME.com to become their technology editor. Now it turns out he's doing something much bigger and more exciting that trying to cram cutting edge tech reporting into the staid pages of an old media Web site: He's helped create Techland, a standalone site that's virtually exploding with geek fare, starting, of course, with a first-person essay by Marvel Zombies comic book writer Robert Kirkam, illustrated with a comic book image featuring the heaving bosom of damsel in some kind of distress.

TIME.com promises us this "one-stop shop for technology, entertainment, games and culture," won't be "just another tech site." "It will combine breaking tech news, reviews and discussion on the cutting edge of all things nerd."

Other contributors include Lev Grossman, TIME senior writer, book critic and lead technology writer; Matt Selman, TIME.com/Nerdworld contributor and Simpsons executive producer; MTV News and Wired.com contributor Tracey John; and former Newsday and New York Sun writer Steve Snyder.

Editor & Publisher reports that Yahoo has snagged Dallas Morning News deputy managing editor for interactive news (and former KRON-TV reporter) Anthony Moor to lead the site's local news efforts.

E&P, which calls Moor "one of the top Web editors in the country," notes that monthly unique users at dallasnews.com increased 186% in the two years Moor's been at the helm.

Moor has a long history in online operations. Before Dallas, he was interactive editor at the Orlando Sentinel and the Rochester (NY) Democrat. And before that, he joined a broadband startup.

It's also worth noting that Moor is on the board of the Online News Association, which Yahoo senior director in charge of front page programming (and former San Francisco Chronicle deputy managing editor, and possibly Moor's new boss -- we'll check on that) Liz Lufkin just joined. Lufkin also just co-chaired ONA's annual conference.

A tweet from Moor says he'll be building a "staff of editors around US who will improve the local news experience on frontpage."

Update: As with other recent hire, Andrew Golis, Moor will work within the group managed by Dave Morgan, the former LA Times sports editor who's been leading the Yahoo Sports effort and who is in charge of Yahoo's 24/7 editorial desk. Moor will "help lead an initiative aimed at improving the local offerings for our users by bringing the most relevant and timely local content to Yahoo!," a company spokesman tells us. The exact contours haven't been nailed down, but it will involve delivering local programming to the Yahoo Front Page.

Andrew Golis, the deputy publisher of politics site Talking Points Memo, announced on his personal blog yesterday he is headed to Yahoo to "run a new news blog."

It's a coup for Yahoo. Talking Points Memo is one of the leading new media sites that's not only gained recognition for the quality of its reporting (it won a Polk Award last year for breaking the Department of Justice/attorneys general scandal), but it has also figured out how to turn a profit off the Interwebs.

Golis' venture will live in Yahoo News and sounds like it intends to leverage at least some aspects of the TPM model. Golis says it will included "a combination of curation and original reporting, with gregarious linking and sharp, smart writing."

"In other words," he says, "for the folks who read [TPM] for meta journalism news, I'm going to be building a team to bring the most popular news site in the United States into the news link economy."

Om Malik at GigaOm says the hire is one more example of how Yahoo "is finally embracing its inner media company."

"Yahoo is following in the footsteps of AOL," Malik writes, "which has benefited from its ownership of Weblogs' family of blogs. AOL has extended that knowledge and built a big network of popular web destinations that are helping it rustle up display dollars."

For the political junkies and new media whizs out there, it looks like Golis will be hiring: "The blog's name and the brilliant writers who will grace its pageviews are TBD," he says. "Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have ideas for either."

Photo credit: Talking Points Memo

A bunch of beat changes at the San Francisco Chronicle, according to an internal memo published by the SF Appeal.

Sacramento reporter Matthew Yi is leaving the paper to take a new job in Orange County. City Hall reporter Marisa Lagos will be moving to Sacto to take his place. Rachel Gordon is moving to City Hall.

Michael Cabanatuan is headed to transportation. Culture Blog author Justin Berton is moving from features to the Metro desk. And Meredith May is headed to features.

The former head of monetization at YouTube is headed to AOL's advertising platform business and "will be responsible for the company's monetization as it tries to become a major force in display advertising," as GigaOm put it.

Shashi Seth will be AOL's Senior Vice President of Global Advertising Products, reporting to AOL's President of Global Advertising and Strategy Jeff Levick. In between YouTube and AOL, Seth was responsible for revenue generation and business development at Cooliris, a web browser plug-in that enhances the process of browsing online images.

Seth will be located in what AOL calls its "expanding" Mountain View offices, joining Brad Garlinghouse, who recently moved from to AOL from Yahoo, to lead the company's internet and mobile communications efforts and its West Coast ventures. Both join AOL following the appointment in March of former Google senior vice president Tim Armstrong as the company's chairman and CEO.

Liz Lufkin, Yahoo! senior director in charge of front page programming and former deputy managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, was just elected to the Online News Association Board of Directors, for a two-year term beginning January 1, 2010.

Lufkin, who also consults on Yahoo's international sites, was formerly deputy managing editor of USATODAY.com. At the Chronicle, Lufkin supervised the paper's daily and Sunday entertainment and feature sections and helped to found sfgate.com.

Alexia Tsotsis is ditching La-La Land and moving north to take the Web Editor position at SF Weekly. Previously, Tsotsis had been covering technology and business for the SF Weekly's fellow Village Voice Media pub LA Weekly.

LAist caught up with Tsotsis at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco back in April. Her take on the difference between the NorCal and SoCal tech scenes? "They [SF] do software and hardware, and they build the sites, and what we [LA] do is provide the content," she said. "We're informative and entertaining."

Still think this blogging thing is just a fad?

Mashable, the social media news blog which vies with TechCrunch for top tech site in the world, is not only hiring full-time writers, they're so confident that they can attract top talent that applicants are required to have written for a Technorati Top 100 blog.

This comes in the wake of the news that Mashable founder Pete Cashmore is considered one of the 100 most influential people in tech.

Want to learn more about Mashable? Check out mediabistro's recent Q&A: "So What Do You Do, Pete Cashmore, Mashable Founder and CEO?"

The Center for Investigative Reporting is launching what might be the new face of investigative reporting in an era when newspaper investigative staffs are being decimated. California Watch is an 11-member team that will report on the state of public schools and colleges, the impact of budget cuts on health and welfare, and the influence of money on politics.

The team includes the San Francisco Chronicle's former ace Lance Williams and the Los Angeles Times' Robert Salladay, who took a buyout in 2007.

Also on the team: Former San Diego Union-Tribune database specialist Agustin Armendariz, Christina Jewitt of ProPublica, former LA Times multimedia producer Mark S. Luckie, and UC Berkeley grad and 2009 Carnegie-Knight News21 Fellow Lisa Pickoff-White.

CIR says over 700 people applied for the jobs.

Full press release, after the jump.

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Current Media is bringing on another industry veteran to help spur growth: Ken Ripley, who is coming on as Executive Vice President of Advertising Sales.

Ripley has a slew of experience managing ad sales in television and digital media, including at in-game advertising company IGA, Discovery Communications, and TiVo.

Current says Ripley will "develop the next generation of advertising products designed to empower consumers to promote brands with innovative peer-to-peer marketing tools and programs on Current Media and its content partners."

Interestingly, he will also be based in New York.

Ripley's appointment follows the announcement last month that former MTV Networks head Mark Rosenthal would become the company's CEO.

Full press release, after the jump.

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