Veteran Washington Post Journalist Morley Joins Center for Independent Media as Editorial Director

Jefferson Morley, a 15-year veteran at the Washington Post, has joined the Center for Independent Media as its National Editorial Director, with overall responsibility for guiding the Center’s fast-growing network of 40 journalists, and overseeing the launch of a new Washington, D.C.-based online news site with 10 reporters in late 2007.

“After a thorough and intensive search, we are honored to have Jeff Morley join our team,” said David S. Bennahum, the Center’s President and CEO.  “With Jeff’s magazine experience from The Nation and New Republic, daily newspaper experience from the Washington Post, and track record as an editor of the Post’s web site, Jeff is ideally suited to help lead the way to the 21st century newsroom.”

“The news business is in rapid transformation as the Internet becomes the dominant medium for getting news. The Center is pioneering the way news works online by producing a new form of journalism that embraces the speed and intimacy of blogging with the standards and accuracy of traditional journalism,” Bennahum added. 

The Center currently operates sites in four states: Colorado Confidential, Iowa Independent, Michigan Messenger, and Minnesota Monitor.

“The Center’s national news network offers an exciting new model for building independent online journalism,” Morley said. “My goal is to combine old-fashioned fact gathering and fairness with attitude, and Internet-era values of interactivity and transparency.”

Morley served as assistant editor for the Sunday Outlook section of the Washington Post and as world news editor for washingtonpost.com while launching the World Opinion Roundup column. He is the author of the forthcoming book, “Our Man in Mexico,” a biography of CIA spy Winston Scott, to be published in spring 2008 by the University Press of Kansas.

The Center for Independent Media, founded in May 2006, is a nonprofit organization that fosters diversity of ideas in the national debate.  The Center’s reporters are the winners of numerous awards for journalistic excellence from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), and adhere to the SPJ’s code of ethics.  The Center’s sites have garnered more than four million visits since launch in July 2006, and the Center’s Fellows have broken numerous stories of importance, triggering extensive coverage in print and broadcast media.  Additional information on the Center and its programs can be found at www.newjournalist.org.

Contact:
Jefferson Morley/David Bennehum
202.387.3670