New Editor Named at Philly.com

Eric Ulken is the new editor of Philly.com, the website’s parent company announced today.

The announcement came one day after Mike Topel announced he is departing the position. Ulken had served at Topel’s side as Philly.com’s director of digital strategy since 2014. His old position will be consolidated with his new duties.

“Effective immediately, Eric Ulken will take on oversight of the editorial operations of Philly.com in addition to his existing product strategy and audience development responsibilities,” Stan Wischnowski, vice president of news operations for Philadelphia Media Network, said in a memo distributed today to the newsroom. “In this expanded role, Eric will be a more active presence in the newsroom, helping to guide our digital transformation and build our capacity to deliver the most relevant and useful journalism to the right audiences in the right formats at the right time.”

Ulken previously served in digital posts at the Seattle Times and L.A. Times.

“Philly.com has great traffic, and a great audience in the sense that it’s a desirable audience for advertisers,” he told Philly Mag in 2014. “It’s an audience that we think has a lot of potential to grow and to engage.  I think of Philly.com as having a lot of potential as a premium product, both for users and advertisers. A place where we can run the big Sunday stories and we can also cover breaking news in an effective and compelling way.”

Read Wischnowski’s full memorandum below:

From Stan Wischnowski, Vice President of News Operations for PMN:

As you may have heard, Mike Topel will be leaving PMN for a new editing opportunity at NBC in New York. His last day will be Jan. 15. Mike, an Inquirer veteran who held many editing roles here before working a short time at Digital First Media’s Project Thunderdome, brought new energy and instilled a collaborative spirit to Philly.com and the other newsrooms during his time as the website’s executive editor. I’m grateful for his contributions and wish him the best.

Effective immediately, Eric Ulken will take on oversight of the editorial operations of Philly.com in addition to his existing product strategy and audience development responsibilities. In this expanded role, Eric will be a more active presence in the newsroom, helping to guide our digital transformation and build our capacity to deliver the most relevant and useful journalism to the right audiences in the right formats at the right time. He brings to this effort years of experience in change management initiatives in other newsrooms.

Eric came to Philly from The Seattle Times, where he was the director of product management for seattletimes.com, overseeing the business performance of The Times’ flagship digital product, including revenue from advertising and subscriptions. Before that he served as the paper’s assistant managing editor for digital, directing the producer team and coordinating the newsroom’s overall digital strategy.

Eric was previously the editor for interactive technology at the Los Angeles Times, where he led the creation of the Data Desk, a cross-functional team of developers, designers, and reporters responsible for producing data-driven journalism projects. He also served as the managing editor for news at latimes.com. 

Under Eric’s direction, Philly.com successfully unveiled a mobile site relaunch last month and will launch a full redesign by the end of March. He is one of the team leaders of the Temple-Knight digital transformation project involving PMN, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Miami Herald and The Dallas Morning News.

Some details of the transition remain to be worked out. The critical real-time desk initiative that Mike has been overseeing proceeds apace under the direction of Gabe Escobar and Frank Kummer, and we will have more to share about that very soon.