Two days after luring Howard Fineman away from Newsweek, Arianna Huffington has herself another coup: Peter Goodman, former New York Times national economic correspondent and current Sunday business section writer, is heading to the Huffington Post, where he’ll serve as the site’s business and technology editor.
Howard Kurtz, who was once Goodman’s editor at the Washington Post, broke the news of the job change.
Getting Fineman to leave Newsweek — a struggling weekly magazine, about to be sold — is one thing. Convincing a reporter for the New York Times — the paper of record, with a great website — to decamp to HuffPo is something else entirely.
But it sounds like Goodman felt a little tied down at the Times.
"For me it's a chance to write with a point of view," Goodman told Kurtz. "It's sort of the age of the columnist. With the dysfunctional political system, old conventional notions of fairness make it hard to tell readers directly what's going on. This is a chance for me to explore solutions in my economic reporting."
And while he claims he was apparently happy there, Goodman says he was effectively “[engaged in] … a process of laundering my own views, through the tried-and-true technique of dinging someone at some think tank to say what you want to tell the reader." Wow.
"This is an example of how the Huffington Post, because of our traffic and our ability to help shape the national conversation, has demonstrated we can have an impact," Huffington told Kurtz. "Traditional journalists can come to us and not give up any of that impact. Often they can increase it."
Of course, that Goodman's wife, Deanna Fei, was “already blogging for Huffington” probably helped, too.
Meanwhile, the size of HuffPo’s editorial staff is nearing the 100 mark — a number that, while nothing like the Times, is equal to if not larger than some print newspapers.
