NBC News Digital has announced that David Firestone is joining the team as its new managing editor, beginning May 1.
The New York-based Firestone joins the digital team after a two-year stint as managing editor at Nate Silver‘s FiveThirtyEight, where he focused on politics, particularly the 2016 presidential cycle. Prior to that, Firestone spent 21 years as a reporter and editor at The New York Times. He had been deputy editor on the national and metro desks at the Times.
NBC News Digital executive editor Catherine Kim sent the below note to staff this past Wednesday:
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Team –
I’m thrilled to share some wonderful news. We’ve hired a Managing Editor for NBC News Digital. David Firestone is joining the team on May 1st and I couldn’t be more excited.
David comes to us from The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight.com, where he was most recently Managing Editor.
Of course, politics was a huge focus for FiveThirtyEight.com during David’s tenure and he was critical in helping the startup gain traction and notice throughout the 2016 presidential race.
Prior to joining FiveThirtyEight, David spent 21 years at The New York Times in a variety of reporting and editing roles. As a reporter, he was a national correspondent covering the South (including 36 days covering the disputed election of 2000), a Washington correspondent covering Congress and politics, and was City Hall bureau chief. (Though he prefers to be known as a former Queens bureau chief.) He later became deputy metropolitan editor and deputy national editor, leading scores of major enterprise stories and projects, and was the lead editor on the paper’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. He was also the chief political writer and projects editor for the NYT’s editorial board.
David has also worked at newspapers in Dallas and in Kansas City, where he grew up and still visits when he needs some real barbecue and a Royals home game. No doubt that’ll get our rabid Mets fans in the newsroom talking!
David will work closely with me as we continue to expand our newsroom, refine our editorial mission, innovate and evolve and build a loyal audience across all our platforms and products. In addition to sharing his expertise on all things politics with Gregg, David will focus on our overall daily and enterprise coverage across all news with our senior news editors and reporters, diversity vertical editors, visual journalists and video team leads.
Please join me in welcoming David to NBC News.