Yahoo7 poaches Daily Mail Australia assistant editor Simon Wheeler as head of editorial
Wheeler
Digital joint venture Yahoo7 has today announced it has poached Daily Mail Australia assistant editor Simon Wheeler as its new head of editorial in Australia and New Zealand.
Wheeler replaces Anne Markey who left Yahoo7 to join Mamamia in February to head up DebriefDaily.com.
His appointment comes at a time when Yahoo7 News has seen its unique audience fall dramatically year on year, with the latest Nielsen digital numbers showing a fall from 3.1m unique users in April 2014 to 2.2m in April 2015.
Wheeler began writing for national newspapers and magazines in the UK, including The Sun and The Daily Star, before moving to the Daily Telegraph in Australia.
Yahoo7 director of product and audience Caroline Casey said: “Providing engaging, entertaining and informative content for our audience is at the core of our business model. We constantly strive to enhance editorial offerings across all our media properties with the goal of being number one in news.
“Simon coming on board will be key to achieving this and I look forward to working with him as we continue to grow Yahoo7 and Yahoo New Zealand as the go-to destination for news, lifestyle, entertainment, sport and finance.”
His appointment comes just two months after Yahoo7 appointed Simon Black head of news and also faced a major round of redundancies, sacking 10 per cent of its workforce.
Nic Christensen
He needs all the luck he can get. Yahoo has a strange editorial offering that appears to be all things equal to everybody, along with a really poor UX. The only way is up.
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agree with BKG — looks like it’s been designed and produced by committee. Which, being part of a JV whose partners couldn’t be more different, is probably the case. ANd the fact their news product has lost so much audience – when all of their competitors are growing theirs – speaks volumes.
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Nine have killed them in the online News space. Got to hand it to 9 for their approach here, excellent work and delivered in a very short period of time. No one saw it coming.
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Good bloke, good journo too
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The fact the director has a goal that will never be reached is concerning and ambarrassing for anyone who knows the market.
I’m sure the Herald Sun would love to be number one too. But they know they never will be and don’t blast it in the press embarrassingly.
Yahoo7 got to number 2 a few years ago with a focus on clickbait. If anything the Sunrise content approach is better than news online. They have had so much change there in the last year and news has gone backwards.
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