Lauren Fisher, the assistant news editor, will be The Post’s next editor-in-chief.
The Post’s publishing board selected her Sunday night after presentations Friday. After a close race, Fisher emerged as the highest-ranked candidate after giving a detail-oriented presentation on the direction she wants to take The Post.
“She had a lot of example of things she’d like to see The Post doing, even had some well-informed but kind of pointed critiques at some of the things The Post is doing and how The Post could improve in those areas,” Hans Meyer, Post Publishing Board chair and associate professor of journalism, said.
Although many candidates have focused on improving the digital side of The Post in recent years, Fisher gave specific critiques on how the publication can improve digitally.
“She talked about different ways The Post can be using social media and she talked about different ways The Post can be sharing on social media, as well as displaying content on our website and making content more appealing online,” Liz Backo, 2017-18 editor-in-chief, said.
During her Friday presentation, Fisher emphasized the importance of knowing The Post’s audience and how to best connect with them on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter.
“What I’ve realized recently is that in order to grow your audience, you have to first know your audience and I don’t really think that we know our audience so I want to focus on finding ways to begin producing content that our community wants to see and not just what our journalists want to see and growing our digital storytelling,” Fisher said.
She also talked about how The Post can improve digital storytelling and diversity in the newsroom.
“I really liked that she wasn’t afraid kind of be a little bit critical of The Post,” Meyer said. “Lauren also showed that she has the right kind of work ethic to really make some of those things happen.”
One of Fisher’s goals for next year is to grow The Post through teamwork within the newsroom. She talked about how the newsroom can be a “training ground” for staff members to grow and learn together from an array of experiences.
“We need to focus on recruiting smarter and harder in the different colleges so that we’re getting people from different backgrounds and all different skill sets, and that includes the emphasis on recruiting more diversely because I think that really ties into having more diverse coverage as well,” Fisher said.
Fisher has several strong ideas not only about how to improve content, but also how to make sure that The Post is continuing to grow as a media outlet, and not just as a newspaper, Backo said.
“One of the things I want to do is start finding more of a balance between the blog side of The Post and also our more impactful news, investigate stories and one of the ways is establishing an investigative team,” Fisher said.
Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify Fisher's position.
