ProPublica announced on Thursday a series of changes for the audience team, including the hiring of Kassandra Navarro as deputy audience editor, the move of Kengo Tsutsumi to the newly created role of partnerships editor and the hiring of Sophia Kovatch as audience editor for search.
Navarro joins ProPublica from Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, where she served as the director of audience development overseeing audience growth and engagement, community outreach, product strategy and membership. She was previously the founding social editor at The 19th and has worked with numerous other nonprofit news organizations, including the Houston Landing, Southerly and Futuro Media Group. Before stepping into the world of journalism, she worked in digital and social strategy in the nonprofit and public sectors for more than 10 years, most notably leading digital at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. Navarro is based in Texas. She will begin May 1.
“Kassie comes to us with deep experience in helping develop audiences for investigative journalism,” said Dan Petty, director of audience strategy. “With so many changes in how audiences find news, her ideas to connect us with new audiences will be essential to ProPublica’s continued success in audience growth.”
Since joining ProPublica in September 2022, Kovatch has focused on making ProPublica’s work more visible to users and search algorithms. She joined the organization from ClearVoice, a marketing agency with a focus on content creation, where she served as an SEO editor. Before that, she worked as an SEO strategist for Inseev Interactive.
“We’re thrilled Sophia has joined us as our first audience editor for search,” Petty said. “Search remains a critical place for us to find audiences who haven’t heard of ProPublica and to expand the impact of our existing investigations and service journalism.”
Tsutsumi is moving to be partnerships editor to shape the organization’s strategy with publishing partnerships, especially with local television and emerging platforms. Tsutsumi joined ProPublica as a deputy audience editor in 2018 from the news startup Mic, where he served as an editorial director.
“Partnerships have been key to expanding the reach and impact of ProPublica’s journalism since its founding, and Kengo has distinguished himself in building them here,” Petty said. “We look forward to building even more strategic publishing collaborations to expand our reach.”
