Capital New York – by Jeremy Barr
Everytown for Gun Safety, the nonprofit advocacy organization co-chaired by Michael Bloomberg, is launching an adjacent news operation, scheduled to debut in June, Capital has learned.
James Burnett, who resigned from The New Republic in January as part of a larger staff exodus, has signed on as editorial director of the project. Burnett served as story editor for T.N.R., and also spent several years as news editor for New York magazine.
Another journalist attached prominently to the Everytown news project is Jennifer Mascia. Mascia spent eight years as a news and editorial assistant at The New York Times before leaving in August 2014. Her relevance to the mission of Everytown is clear: she spent a year writing the Times’ Gun Report feature, in which she compiled instances of gun violence around the country.
The Gun Report was launched in response to the Newtown school shootings in December 2012. It ended in June 2014, when columnist Joe Nocera—whose blog hosted the feature—wrote that he “began to feel that we had made the point already.” Mascia wrote about the germination, and end, of the feature in a lengthy piece for Raw Story in July 2014.
As a news site attached to a nonprofit advocacy organization, the site would seemingly be in the vein of ThinkProgress, from the left-leaning Center from American Progress think tank.
Mascia first made reference to the Everytown editorial project in a March Al Jazeera America interview.
“James Burnett, who resigned from The New Republic in January as part of a larger staff exodus, has signed on as editorial director of the project.”
Good. He signed his own death warrant as well, then.
Traitor.