Josh Tyrangiel Heralds 'Boatload' of Vice News Hires

Read it and weep ... Tears of joy, that is. While much of this summer's media news, from IBT Media to HelloGiggles, has been depressing, the folks at Vice continue to build a massive content army. We love the qualifier in the first sentence of Josh Tyrangiel’s memo. Understood; our enthusiasm for each and every one of these talented folks (who start at various dates) is fully calibrated: We’ve got a boatload of new people to announce, but please don’t let the volume overwhelm our enthusiasm for them as individuals. These are really smart, talented and collaborative people. It’s a great bunch, and as we ramp up to launch we’re happy to have each and every one of them. Quinton Boudwin is a new production assistant on the tech desk. He’s a recent graduate of UT Austin and has done internships with The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, the Austin American-Statesman, and KUTX radio. Quentin starts July 25th. Sarah Burke is a producer. Sarah started as a news desk assistant in ABC's Washington bureau before moving to London for NBC, where she's now a hub reporter on the foreign desk. Sarah's a Brit-American, with an undergrad degree from Oxford and an MA from Georgetown. She starts July 18th. Kathleen Caulderwood is a video producer for Vice News. She’s Canadian, because we can not stop ourselves. Kathleen was the Africa correspondent at International Business Times before transitioning into impressively fast and smart multimedia work for Vice News, the Guardian, MSNBC, Mashable and many others. Kathleen started on Monday. Juanita Ceballos is an associate producer. Originally from Colombia, Juanita started her career as a videographer in Mexico City at Telemundo, reporting extensively on the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College and the escape of drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán. She’s a Columbia J-school grad and currently serves as an adjunct professor there as well. Juanita starts August 1st. Cameron Dennis is a video editor. Cameron comes to us from Refinery29. Before that he was a producer and senior editor at BET Digital. With work at Bad Boy and XXL he brings a wealth of experience with music and the music business. Cameron is a grad of the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. He starts July 25th. Adam Desiderio is an international producer. Currently at ABC, Adam has logged a lot miles for Nightline, parachuting into west Africa to report on Ebola and Brazil to report on Zika. (He does things besides pandemics, he just happens to be good at them.) Adam starts August 11th. Darren Foster is a producer joining our L.A. office. Darren’s a Peabody Award-winner who was the series director for "Borderland," Al Jazeera America's first originally commissioned docu-series. He also co-created and produced “Inside: Secret America” for National Geographic. Darren starts July 18th. Kirsten Frisina is deputy social editor. Kirsten comes from The Verge. (There was actual, measurable sadness on Twitter that she was leaving The Verge’s Snapchat channel; an incomprehensible sentence, but true.) She’s also been a podcast producer, and before that ran an ice cream shop. Kirsten starts July 18th. Cassandra Giraldo is an associate producer. After graduating Skidmore, Cassandra entered the photojournalism & documentary program at the International Center of Photography and got a masters at Columbia J-School. Instagram named her to its 2015 list of Emerging Photojournalists. Cassandra started July 7th. Jika Gonzalez is an associate producer on the climate team. Jika’s originally from Mexico City and is currently an adjunct assistant professor for photography and video at Columbia J-school. She has a Master's from Columbia and a B.A. from The New School. Jika starts August 1st. Evan Groll is a tech producer. Based in San Francisco, Evan can shoot, edit and write. He's worked in news, docs and reality TV and will work with Nellie to capture the stories inside Silicon Valley's biggest companies - Apple, Google, Facebook, Hooli, etc. Evan starts August 1st. Joshua Hersh is joining as a correspondent covering national security and defense. Josh was most recently the Michael Hastings Fellow at BuzzFeed News. Prior to that he served as the Middle East correspondent for HuffPo, based in Beirut and Istanbul, and as a reporter at The Daily and a fact-checker at The New Yorker. Josh started July 5th. Ryo Ikegami is a video editor. Ryo was born in Japan and went to school in England at the University of Westminster. He’s spent most of his career at Bloomberg, where he’s won two Emmys for his work. Ryo starts July 18th. Abbey Lossing is an illustrator and digital artist joining the design and graphics team. Abbey’s a Syracuse grad who was previously junior art director at BuzzFeed. To pause for an illustration break before completing the rest of this email go here. Abby starts July 18th. Dave Mayers is an associate producer. Dave has reported from South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland... a lot of places, for the NYT, Time Inc., Al-Jazeera and more. He's a St. John's grad and is currently teaching multimedia storytelling at Columbia. Dave starts July 25th. Isabella McKinley is returning to Vice as an associate producer. Isabella is a graduate of U Chicago and worked as a PA and researcher at VICE in 2015. She’s recently been at something called The Intellectual Property Company, which sounds very scary. Isabella starts July 18th. Evan McMorris-Santoro is our new political correspondent. Evan is the former White House reporter at BuzzFeed, and he’s spent much of the past year on the road with Bernie Sanders. Evan’s the ultimate journalism self-starter. He dropped out of college and started his career as the managing editor of his hometown paper in North Carolina. Eventually he moved to DC and did stints at Hotline and Talking Points Memo before moving to Buzzfeed in 2013. Evan starts August 1st. Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani is a national correspondent. Born and raised in London, she attended Oxford and started her career at Prospect Magazine. She jumped between communications and journalism for a bit before choosing wisely and landing at the FT as a culture columnist. She moved to the US in 2012 and has been a producer and correspondent for HuffPo Live since 2014. Caroline starts July 27th. Oliver Noble is a video producer for Vice News. Most recently Oliver was senior producer at HuffPo where he was Webby-nominated for news mash-ups and other pieces spanning politics, sports, feminism and more that generated over a billion video views. Previously he was an editor and creative director at Heeb magazine. Oliver starts July 18th. Amanda Pisetzner is a producer. She started her career as a fellow in the Santa Cruz county sheriff’s office creating educational and social programs for female inmates, and social justice has been a large part of her work at Peacock Productions, the long form specials unit of NBC News. Amanda starts July 18th. Bernardo Ruiz is joining us as a producer. Bernardo grew up in New York and taught for a year in the public school system before moving into documentary filmmaking. He’s made several doc features including “The Graduates” for PBS and “Reportero,” about a journalist battling Mexican drug cartels. Bernardo starts in early August. Nelson Ryland is a new(ish) video editor. Nelson spent 2015 as a producer and editor at Frontline. This year he's worked mostly on Woman, Viceland’s excellent series featuring Gloria Steinem. In addition to already knowing his way around the building he’s a RISD grad and a Fulbright Scholar, so maybe don’t mess with him. Nelson started July 5th. Stacey Sommer is a producer on the culture team. Stacey started at MTV shortly after graduating from Montclair State, and she’s worked on tons of shows and specials for MTV News and Digital. She also created MTV News' original Facebook video strategy. Stacey starts August 1st. Alex Thompson is politics and policy editor for Vice News. Alex went to school in Boston (ahem) where he played on the water polo team. After graduation he was the chief researcher on a biography of Mitt Romney and then managed a doomed Congressional campaign for a candidate who shall not be named. Most recently he’s been editorial assistant and researcher to NYT Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd. Alex starts August 1st. Sebastian Walker is our new international correspondent and Middle East bureau chief. Simply put, Seb is one of the most accomplished international reporters of his generation. Previously at Reuters and Al Jazeera, he’s got an Emmy, a Dupont and a Peabody for his coverage of Iraq and Haiti. He’ll begin with us in Washington, D.C. before moving to Beirut at the end of 2016. Seb will be in the office this week with a start date TBD. Agnes Walton is a researcher on the climate team. She recently graduated from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she was a Science Communications Fellow at its Institute for Biospheric Studies. She's also a US-Norway Fulbright Fellow and and American-Scandinavian Association Fellow. Personal interests include scuba diving and cheesemaking, though not at the same time. Agnes starts August 1st. It goes without saying that the unsung heroes with regards to these 25 hires (and one returnee) are the Vice Media HR staff. And folks, this is how you have fun with a staff memo. Kudos to Tyrangiel for the entertaining asides, which among other things have now got us wondering what it would look like if someone tried to scuba dive and make cheese at the same time.

Fishbowl

Josh Tyrangiel Heralds 'Boatload' of Vice News Hires

This time around, it's 25 new hires and one returning staff member.

Richard Horgan

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Richard Horgan