Lydia Polgreen is stepping down as editor in chief of Huffington Post to join Gimlet Media as head of content, she announced Friday morning on Twitter.
Polgreen has led HuffPost for the last thee years, seeing it through a period of change and staff cuts under owner Verizon Media. She had succeeded founder Arianna Huffington in the role. “I’m incredibly grateful to my extraordinary colleagues, and to the leadership of Verizon Media, which has championed HuffPost at a time when aggressive journalism that holds power to account is more necessary and more under threat than ever,” she wrote on Twitter. Her successor at HuffPost has not yet been named.
“Lydia has been a valuable part of our Verizon Media family and we thank her for all of her contributions. We wish Lydia all the best,” a Verizon Media spokeswoman said in a statement.
At Gimlet, she will oversee the entire content slate, reporting to Gimlet co-founder and managing director Alex Blumberg. She joins the company following its sale to Spotify in 2019. Her purview will include setting the creative vision for the podcast studio as it looks to expand as part of Spotify’s push to grow its nonmusic audio streaming business.
Gimlet’s shows include Reply All, Science Vs. and scripted series Homecoming and Motherhacker. Spotify’s acquisition of the studio kicked off its expansion into audio-first programming and has been a pivotal piece of the 200 percent year-over-year growth in podcast consumption on its platform.
“I’ve been an audio obsessive since I was a little expat kid glued to the shortwave radio in our kitchen in Kenya, yearning to connect with the far flung world,” Polgreen’s statement on Twitter continues. “Gimlet has built the greatest audio team in the world, and I’m so lucky to have the chance to learn from them. Together we have the opportunity to chart the future of the spoken word on the world’s most powerful audio platform. I can’t wait to get started later this spring.”
