John Cook, Gawker's former investigative reporter who left the site in April for a job at Yahoo's then-percolating Upshot, is returning to the Nick Denton mothership.
Yahoo News editor Andrew Golis made the announcement on his personal blog:
Sadly, John Cook is heading back to Gawker. John’s a brilliant reporter, but he decided that he prefers the license Gawker gave him to add his opinions into his reporting to the scale and credibility Yahoo! News could offer. We’ll miss him, but we’ll still enjoy reading him over there, I’m sure.
Interestingly, that sounds similar to the reason Peter Goodman gave yesterday for jumping from the New York Times to the Huffington Post.
Meanwhile, Golis is looking to make two new hires: a senior national affairs reporter, and a "night blogger."
Here are the job descriptions:
The Senior National Affairs Reporter has to be able to both narrate the day’s national news in short bursts and dive deep on exclusive reporting projects. That means we need someone with both serious reporting and serious blogging chops; someone who has a broad knowledge base on issues as varied as business and crime and the ability to develop sources and expertise quickly. Only those with more than 5 years of journalism experience will be considered.
We’re also looking for someone to fill a new position: Night Blogger. As The Upshot and eventually the Yahoo! News blog network expands, we want to make sure we’re ready to cover the news whenever it breaks. To keep us up late and get us moving early, we’re looking for a generalist news blogger who can aggregate in the evenings and help get us ready to start each day. We need someone who can can write clean, tight, accessible posts that span The Upshot’s three beats (national affairs, politics and media) and work from about 5 pm to 2 am each weekday. This person will need especially to understand and be ready to aggregate from primetime television. Only those with more than 3 years of journalism experience will be considered.
Golis adds:
Only those with a deep understanding of online media will be considered for either position and the ability to juggle email, IM, Twitter, TV and/or phone calls while writing is essential.
And:
Both bloggers will be paid according to experience. People of color and women are strongly encouraged to apply.
