MTV News has hired Jason Kaufman, the founding editor of PopEater.com, as its vice president of daily news, a newly-created position.
Kaufman, who most recently served as general manager and editor-in-chief of PopEater site — one of the AOL-branded properties that survived the merger with the Huffington Post — starts on May 2. He'll report to MTV News SVP Benjamin Wagner.
Kaufman created PopEater.com in 2008.
Here's the full release:
NEW YORK, NY — April 11, 2011 — MTV News today announced the hiring of Jason Kaufman to the newly created position of Vice President of Daily News. Kaufman previously served as General Manager and Editor in Chief of AOL’s PopEater.
MTV News is the authority for music, movies and pop culture news for the Millennial audience, producing a diverse mix of daily news stories, insider specials, weekly series, live red carpet shows, exclusive music video and movie premieres, as well as exclusive artist and celebrity interviews on-air, online, via mobile and across social media. The unit has experienced tremendous growth year-over-year (57-percent increase in unique visitors; 32-percent increase in video streams), fueled largely by its innovative, interactive new initiative, “MTV First.”
“MTV First” embraces the channel’s short-form legacy with live four-minute, on-air exclusive interviews that expand in real-time to long-form, online live streams. Since January, “MTV First” has featured Lil Wayne, Foo Fighters, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, and Robert Pattinson, plus the recently announced Taylor Lautner, as well as online-only live stream, “RapFix Live.”
Beginning May 2, Kaufman will serve alongside Ryan Kroft, Vice President of Specials, Series and Special Projects, and report to Benjamin Wagner, Senior Vice President of MTV News.
In this role, Kaufman will helm MTV News’ multiplatform daily news operations, including reporting, writing, shooting, and production of on-air and online video packages, articles and blogs. In addition, he will undertake expanding MTV News’ product development and emerging platforms, partnerships and syndication.
“Jason has incredibly-strong digital roots,” Wagner said. “We’re counting on his editorial sensibilities, wealth of news experience, and deep sense of what’s important to our audience to hyper-fuel the award-winning team already in place, and draw on the access, authority and expertise inherent to MTV News to deliver the best music, movies and pop-culture breaking news and features to fans.”
“MTV News has broken the news on many of the biggest pop culture moments of my lifetime,” Kaufman said. “I’m thrilled to join the team, and help guide their current and future audience through countless more."
In his previous position, Kaufman created PopEater.com in 2008 and led a team of editors, designers, product leads, writers and producers in all aspects of site operations from original programming creation and business development to content strategy and syndication efforts. Prior to PopEater, Kaufman developed entertainment news coverage for multiple Web properties, including AOL News, Moviefone, AOL Music and AOL Television. Kaufman has also held positions at AOL Entertainment, MSN, US Magazine and Entertainment Weekly.
Kaufman holds a Bachelor of Science in Television, Radio and Film Production from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
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