Joshua David Stein is joining BlackBook in February as editor-in-chief. He will assume editorial responsibility for the  BlackBook brand across web, mobile, and print. Formerly, Stein was senior editor at  Departures magazine and has previously worked at Gawker.

This week has seen some major changes over at Nick Denton‘s premiere site, Gawker.com. First off: Managing Editor Gabriel Snyder is out after 18 months at the job. In a memo to the staff, Snyder sniffed that he’d be “canned” after leaving the West Coast and writing for The Observer to come work for Denton. Snyder’s replacement will be Remy Stern, the founder of Cityfile.com, which Denton has also acquired. Interesting choice, since Cityfile and Gawker would have at one point seemed to overlap in their respective goals, but as Gawker has widened itself from a New York-centric blog to a more global outreach, Cityfile’s acquisition could represent Denton’s desire to hang on to the old Gawker stake in Manhattan drama. Denton’s official reason for buying up Cityfile was, as he told The Wall Street Journal, “to compete more effectively with reference sites. We and they are in a battle for position in Google search results.”

Meanwhile Weekends Editor Foster Kamer will be leaving his post to take a new position writing with Roy Edroso at The Village Voice‘s Runnin’ Scared blog starting March 1st. Kamer will also be leaving his (week)day job of associate editor at BlackBook. Foster announced his departure on Twitter, claiming it had nothing to do with Snyder being fired and we believe him…we’ve been hearing rumors of The Voice not-so-subtly courting the 25-year old wunderkind for weeks now.

Read More: Gawker Finds Itself in the Spotlight — Wall Street Journal

Although they have nothing to do with each other, we noticed that there have been lots of appointments to the top spot at a handful of media organizations over the last few days. Is something in the air?

Interview magazine, which was at the center of some controversy at publisher Brant Publications earlier this year, seems to finally have established a powerful editorial team. The New York Times reports today that BlackBook founder Evanly Schindler has been named president of the magazine, while editor Stephen Mooallem, has been promoted to editor-in-chief. Former creative director Karl Templer, who left Interview earlier this year, is returning, and he will report to Fabien Baron, the editorial director who left and then returned last month.

Earlier today, Broadcasting & Cable reported that the Weather Channel is getting a new CEO. The company, which had been searching for a chief for months, named former AOL Media Networks head Michael Kelly to its top spot.

And on Friday, our colleagues at BayNewser revealed that former MTV Networks president Mark Rosenthal had been picked to lead Current Media, the parent company of Current TV and current.com.

There have been some big changes in the media world, and we can probably expect more to come as companies look for new solutions and fresh blood to tackle problems brought on by the economy. And as more executives and top talent get cut from cost-cutting companies, the pool of available people who can run a media organization is growing.

Related: The Drama At Brant

Stories about freelance writers not getting paid for their work are becoming all too frequent of late. This time around the magazine in question is BlackBook. Freelance writer Nicole Brydson writes at the blog Brooklyn the Borough that the magazine, which hired her to pen a NYC shopping guide at a rate of $20 per item, for a total of 200 listings, initially stalled on the final payment of $1440, and is now apparently attempting to back out altogether claiming Brydson didn’t meet her deadline. Says Brydson:

My deadline was August 1, 2008. After some administrative issues with the website ensued, I was unable to upload my items onto the BlackBook website until early September.

My editor over this time was unresponsive, and took his time editing and placing my work on the site. In the end, 172 of 200 listings were completed by December, and before I could upload the final 28, my login was disabled and my contract was terminated.

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