With Engadget nemesis gone, Gizmodo editor soft-retires
After two years at the helm of the gadget blog, Gizmodo editor Brian Lam has gotten himself kicked upstairs. The former Wired staffer will now focus on live event coverage as an assistant managing editor for our mutual parent company, Gawker Media. Lam will also retain an "editorial director" title at Gizmodo — I'm not sure what that means except someone's been reading too many Condé Nast mastheads. Lam became a gadget-geek cult hero for his aggressive competition with former Engadget editor Ryan Block, who split last month to launch a startup called GDGT. (Lam's even helping Block out as an advisor.) Here's an excerpt of the announcement from Gawker's internal mailing list.
Significant staffing changes at Gizmodo to announce today: Jason Chen is now the editor of Gizmodo. Brian Lam is becoming the site's editorial director as well as an assistant managing editor of Gawker Media focusing on live events. Brian will still spend the majority of his time overseeing Gizmodo, only now he will dedicate more of his time to expanding Gizmodo's presence through features, reader meet-ups, and a curated gadget pop-up store among other projects. Jason, who has always been Brian's right-hand ninja assassin and is easily one of the top pageview earners in the entire network, will take over the site's day-to-day operations. As AME, Brian will focus on organizing and running live events coverage across the network. Brian's mastery of field work (video, photo and live blogging) has surpassed my own. Spreading this knowledge to other editors in the network will benefit everyone, and expand the amount of live events coverage overall. Congrats to both.
