Mashable content chief Jim Roberts on looking for a journalist obsessed with Elon Musk
Jim Roberts is the executive editor and chief content officer of 10 year-old digital media website Mashable.
In this extract from a Q&A with Mumbrella with Asia editor Robin Hicks, the former assistant managing editor of the New York Times and executive editor Thomson Reuters Digital talks about what he says to detractors about Mashable’s broadening of focus beyond tech, what he thinks of brand newsrooms, and why he wants a reporter who knows everything and anything about Elon Musk.
What do you say to people who protest that Mashable has morphed from a tech site to something much broader to cover all sorts of news?
There has been some backlash, but not a lot. Occasionally we’ll see some things on twitter that ask, why aren’t you sticking with tech? You were better when you were just about tech, etc. But while we’ve expanded into other topics we haven’t cut down our tech coverage. We’ve actually grown our tech coverage, just not as fast as other verticals.