Some Changes at NewsBusters

February 24th, 2014 2:00 PM

As explained in his post, Matthew Sheffield, the driving force behind the Media Research Center’s (MRC) decision to launch NewsBusters in 2005, is moving on to new projects for his firm, Dialog New Media.

This means some changes at the top of NewsBusters, but you can count on the site to continue to deliver what it always has: Exposing and combating liberal media bias with timely documentation of the media’s agenda, affection for Barack Obama and disdain for conservatives – with a little fun mixed in.

Tim Graham has assumed the newly created position of Executive Editor. As Director of Media Analysis for the MRC since well before we started NewsBusters, he’s long been overseeing the in-house staff and their blogging. Tim now assumes responsibility over all editorial aspects of NewsBusters and I am fully confident in his ability and dedication to lead NewsBusters.

Tim’s deputy, Ken Shepherd, Managing Editor for almost exactly seven years, will continue handling the daytime operations of the site, working with bloggers to ensure the best posts and coordinating the posting schedule.

A few months ago, Ed Molchany, the Chief Marketing Officer for the MRC, assumed the role of Publisher of NewsBusters. In that role, Ed is leading a re-design of NewsBusters to showcase more posts, offer better graphics and an improved article display while also better integrating social media into the site. We anticipate deploying the new site by early summer, if not sooner.

We all continue to wish for the best for Noel Sheppard, our Associate Editor, who is in a tough cancer battle, which he recounted in this post late last month. Noel is one of the great talents Matt Sheffield brought to us and Noel has certainly shined since as our most prolific and popular blogger.

We are all counting on Noel’s return as soon as he feels well enough to take on the most outrageous of the lefties in the media.

A final word about Matt. In short, NewsBusters wouldn’t be what it is today – the most influential conservative site about news media bias, often exceeding 300,000 visitors a day – without him.

In late 2004, he approached me about starting a blog at the MRC. By early 2005 he had convinced the MRC’s senior management of its potential and the power of this new thing called the “blogosphere.” In August, NewsBusters was launched thanks to his technical expertise, handling the myriad of issues, from lining up a server company capable of handling the increased traffic, to using Drupal to create a site to educating us all on how to use software to upload pictures into a post.

Subsequently, he’s been our guide to the blogging world and always our go-to person on technical matters, the one who jumped in on a Saturday night to fix a problem. Matt also brought us NewsBusted, which has added a comedy element to NewsBusters. It will continue, run by the same team in California which has produced it since it began.