Jonathan Weber out in 'an abrupt turn of events' at tech site

Former US West Coast bureau chief Jonathan Weber (photo) is out as managing editor of the technology news website he joined earlier this year from Reuters.

“I’m out as managing editor of @theinformation, an abrupt turn of events. Best of luck to the fine staff there,” he wrote on Twitter.

Hired by Reuters in 2011 from The Bay Citizen, a local website in San Francisco, Weber oversaw coverage of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and a range of other topics including municipal finance and West Coast energy issues.

He was one of several high-profile US writers and editors who joined Reuters in a hiring spree that quickly attracted media attention. Many of them have since left the company.

Editor-in-chief Stephen Adler said at the time that, to be fully effective as a global organisation, Reuters had to be as influential and as well known in the United States - the world’s largest economy - as it was elsewhere in the world.

“Our mandate at Reuters is to become the best journalism organisation in the world,” he said. 

When The Information’s founder Jessica Lessin hired Weber she described him as “the perfect fit to oversee our newsroom and help me chart our editorial vision. He’s highly respected throughout Silicon Valley and the media industry as a sharp editor and deep thinker about the future of news - and in fact was someone that a number of people told me I should try to hire.” ■