Ken Li lands top Newsweek job alongside Jim Impoco

Former reuters.com global editor Ken Li (photo) has been appointed managing editor of Newsweek. He will be based in New York and will report directly to editor-in-chief Jim Impoco, with whom he worked at Reuters when Impoco was executive editor of Reuters Digital. 

Li will handle day-to-day operations for Newsweek’s website and production of the weekly print and digital magazine. He will work closely with Impoco to shape and guide Newsweek’s editorial direction, manage the team of reporters and editors and coordinate with sales, marketing and technology teams at Newsweek’s owner, online news company IBT Media.

Welcoming Li, who has been founding editor-in-chief of tech news site Re/code, Impoco said he was “eager to have his sharp news sense and digital savvy guiding our operations…Ken’s background includes a great mix of writing, editing and strong newsroom leadership that are critical for the managing editor role.”

Li joined Reuters in 2003 in New York as global media correspondent and left in 2008 to become media correspondent at the Financial Times. He re-joined in 2010 as editor-in-charge of US technology, media and telecommunications coverage before becoming editor of reuters.com.

He was moved aside in May 2013 after being reprimanded with two other editors for failing to tell their superiors that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had raided the home deputy social media editor Matthew Keys. Earlier this month a US judge sentenced Keys to two years in prison for helping members of the Anonymous hacking collective to gain access to a former employer's computers. The events in the indictment occurred before Keys joined Reuters as an editor for Reuters.com in 2012.

Li left Reuters for the second time in December 2013. ■