As Iraq erupts once again, Time magazine unfortunately finds itself without the services of one its most knowledgeable journalists on the Mideast beat.
Bobby Ghosh, a Baghdad bureau chief for five years and most recently the editor of Time International — overseeing the European and Asian editions — has jumped ship to Quartz, the online news operation owned by David Bradley’s Atlantic Media.
“I start at Quartz next month, as managing editor,” Ghosh told Media Ink. “I’ve been a big fan since Quartz launched — they’re unabashedly smart, they’re completely global, they’re digital-native… And they don’t do click-bait. What’s not to love?”
“It wasn’t easy to leave Time,” the veteran journalist admitted. “I’d been there 16 years. But the opportunity at Quartz was too good to refuse. In the end, it came down to this: When was the last time I had a chance to do something for the first time?”
Time went through a big redesign of its web site in March.
While its traffic hit 23.3 million unique visitors in May across all platforms, according to comScore — a nice lift from the year ago May of 15.2 million — it still has a long way to go to crack the top 10 news sites.
And it does not look like the needle moved dramatically in recent months.
The Ghosh departure marks the latest in a parade of high profile editorial departures at Time, which started trading as an independent company on June 9.
So far, no direct replacement for Ghosh has been named.
Time Asia’s top person is Zoher Abdoolcarim, who works out of Hong Kong.
Time Europe is edited out of London by Matt McAllester.