Mark Schoofs is the new editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, according to a Tuesday release from BuzzFeed Founder and CEO Jonah Peretti.
Schoofs is a 30-year journalism veteran and Pulitzer Prize winner who is currently a visiting professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
According to the release, Schoofs earned one Pulitzer Prize at The Village Voice and shared another at The Wall Street Journal and also led a team of investigative journalists at ProPublica. He founded BuzzFeed News’ own investigations team in 2014.
“I’m thrilled to come back to BuzzFeed News,” Schoofs said in a statement released with the announcement. “Its journalists — tough, rigorous, and fearless — are the best in the world, hands down.”
In late January, Ben Smith announced he was exiting the editor-in-chief role after eight years, similarly praising BuzzFeed News’ journalists: “It’s been the privilege of my life to do this job, in its many iterations, for more than eight years,” he wrote in a letter first sent to staff. “The notion that BuzzFeed could play a major role in shaping global news, and the news business — from tweets to streaming shows — sounded crazy in 2012. Now it’s just a fact, the product of most of all of your hard work, creativity, aggressiveness, and judgment.”
On Twitter, Smith reacted to the announcement, calling it “an incredible, ambitious hire.”