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Memo: Matt Frehner named Globe’s senior editor of mobile and interactive news

As senior editor, Frehner will manage a new mobile and interactive news unit at The Globe and Mail.  Here is The Globe and Mail memo on Matt Frehner's new appointment.  We’re pleased to announce that Matt Frehner will be taking on the new role of Senior Editor, Mobile & Interactive News. He will manage a new mobile…

As senior editor, Frehner will manage a new mobile and interactive news unit at The Globe and Mail

Here is The Globe and Mail memo on Matt Frehner's new appointment. 

We’re pleased to announce that Matt Frehner will be taking on the new role of Senior Editor, Mobile & Interactive News.

He will manage a new mobile and interactive news unit that will focus on three things:

–          Driving impactful, ambitious long-term multimedia projects on all digital platforms in collaboration with reporters and editors.

–          Increasing reach and engagement on mobile. This will involve developing our mobile storytelling capabilities, continuing to make mobile content part of our daily planning and developing new products, such as an Android tablet app that is set to be launched this summer.

–          Improving our ability to tell great digital stories on a regular basis. This will include building tools that journalists across the building can use to enhance their work.

From a wider perspective, Matt will play a key part in helping us to develop our overall digital strategy.

This comes at a pivotal time for The Globe, when almost 50% of our digital traffic now comes from our mobile products. This number is only growing; mobile can no longer be considered an emerging platform for us. Concurrently, on all platforms, we are inviting readers to spend more time with our stories, read more deeply and share more widely. Matt’s team will be a cornerstone of this ambition.

Since joining The Globe in 2007 as an editor in our summer program, Matt has worked in almost every section, including stints as a homepage editor and technology editor. As our first mobile editor (pre-iPad!), he was involved in the design and development of 14 distinct mobile applications, including the award-winning Globe News iPhone app, and a mobile website redesign.  He also led the team that spent a year preparing for our transition to our new publishing system. In the past six months, he has led such projects as the mobile tiger team, the Sochi Live blog and the creation of new templates for longform features and other storytelling formats.

Matt is not only a tireless advocate for innovation, but someone who understands that our necessary route to becoming a great digital organization is through open collaboration, trial and error and the strongest journalistic values.

Please welcome Matt in his new role.

Kevin Siu              David Walmsley

Tamara Baluja is an award-winning journalist with CBC Vancouver and the 2018 Michener-Deacon fellow for journalism education. She was the associate editor for J-Source from 2013-2014.