Gawker Media’s Emma Carmichael will take the reins at The Hairpin from founding editor Edith Zimmerman, who is stepping down after running the site since it launched in October 2010. The switch was announced in a post on The Awl this morning.
Ms. Carmichael left Gawker, where she was the managing editor, to become the managing editor of Deadspin in January. When she made the change, Gawker’s Nick Denton said that she was “on a site lead track for us.” Looks like Ms. Carmichael was on a site lead track, just at a different site–one founded by former Gawker editors.
“If Edith and all the rest of us had sat around in a circle on the floor of the office with blindfolds on (as we so often do) and secret-balloted names in a hat for who we all wanted to run The Hairpin now, it would have been like 100% pieces of paper that said ‘Emma Carmichael’ on them,” The Awl editor Choire Sicha said in an email. “Kind of like on ‘Survivor’ when everyone hates one person and they unanimously vote them off the island, except in total reverse! She has to come live on our crazy made-up island now!”
“Emma is excellent, and I’m so happy she wanted to join!” Ms. Zimmerman told us. “And I have no idea what I’m going to do.”
According to a conversation between the outgoing and incoming editors that was posted on The Hairpin this morning, Ms. Zimmerman will continue at the site during the transition before taking a break. But the founding editor is not leaving for good.
“I’ll sometimes write for the site, but otherwise be doing … whatever it is that I’m going to be doing,” Ms. Zimmerman wrote on The Hairpin.
This change comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that Nicole Cliffe, The Hairpin’s book editor, was leaving to start a new site with The Hairpin contributor Mallory Ortberg that sounds not very dissimilar from The Awl network’s sister site.
