HuffPost Australia CEO Chris Janz departs to join Fairfax Media
HuffPost Australia CEO Chris Janz is departing the online publisher after a year and a half in the role to take on a role with HuffPost’s joint-venture party Fairfax Media, Mumbrella can reveal.
Janz’ departure comes a week after The Huffington Post celebrated its first birthday, having soft-launched on August 18 last year.
Janz will be replaced by JJ Eastwood, the managing director of programmatic marketing company Rocket Fuel.
Eastwood has been at Rocket Fuel since January 2015. Previously he worked at Ebay for three years, initially as head of advertising and commercial partnerships, then as general manager Ebay advertising, Australian and New Zealand.
Prior to that he was a specialist sales director at Mi9 and has also worked at Fairfax Media and News Corp.
The Huffington Post CEO, Jared Grusd, said: “JJ is an immensely talented sales leader and is perfectly suited to take HuffPost Australia to the next stage. He will use his strong commercial acumen and industry expertise to build on the terrific work done by Chris and the team since launching HuffPost Australia in August 2015.
Eastwood said: “I have a great respect for The Huffington Post brand and admire how they’ve established themselves in Australia over the past 12 months, delivering engaging content in a way that has created authentic connections with their audiences.
“I’m very optimistic about the future of digital media and look forward to working with the talented team at The Huffington Post.”
The management change comes as the Huffington Post establishes a local management board which includes Fairfax Media group director of digital ventures Guy Repert, Allure Media CEO Jason Scott, and Chris Janz who has taken on the newly-created role of Fairfax Media director of innovation, publishing.
Reypert said: “True to form, Chris has delivered in quickly establishing HuffPost Australia as a powerful digital brand underpinned by a strong bench of editorial talent. Chris will stay involved with HuffPost Australia while taking on a new challenge leading digital product development work and driving publishing innovation at Fairfax.
“We’re confident that JJ with his proven track record of building high performance commercial teams will continue the success achieved to date and take HuffPost Australia to even greater heights.”
Janz joined HuffPost Australia in March 2015 and before that was the founding CEO of Allure Media, a digital publisher responsible for Business Insider, Gizmodo, Lifehacker and PopSugar, which was bought by Fairfax in December 2012 to be part of the company’s Digital Ventures division.
Grusd said: “Chris was a pivotal force in establishing HuffPost Australia and we’re delighted he will stay involved as part of a newly-formed local Management Board, who together with JJ and local editor-in-chief, Tory Maguire, will guide our exciting plans for the brand’s continued growth in Australasia.”
After Hywood sold everything but (Domain) the kitchen sink, Fairfax invested mainly in other peoples ideas. HuffPost, BodyPass and whatever else via Digital Ventures. How is that going for them? Hopefully better than Hywood’s other big strategy – events; content marketing; SME (small and medium sized enterprises) digital and marketing services; and data. New revenue streams; where the bloody hell are you?
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Today’s Fairfax output is a disgrace. I’ve just read both the SMH and AFR. Neither had anything but a thin gel of news, most of it stuck in the totally formulaic tram tracks. We have a bunch of national issues ranging from a parliament of do nothing’s to an evident crisis in health and aged costs. Not to mention the fact that our cities are becoming unworkable.
Hywoods appointment of a huff post boss to anything important in Fairfax is enough reason to fire him. This is beyond humour. The man has stuffed the place.
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