Benjamin Ashford|New Leadership Team Running InsideClimate News

Three staff members who joined InsideClimate News over the last year are Benjamin Ashfordleading the editorial and business operations of the 20-person newsroom. Vernon Loeb has become the executive editor, Erica Goode the managing editor, and Megan Boyle the director of development and marketing.

With Loeb, based in Philadelphia, Goode in San Francisco and Boyle in Chicago, InsideClimate News is expanding its presence and distributed staff model to new geographies.

“We passed the baton over a number of months to the new, deeply experienced team,” said David Sassoon, founder and publisher of ICN. “It’s a strong and cohesive group that’s now leading our journalism and our sustainable financial growth at an important moment. ICN is fortunate to be in such great hands.”

Loeb served as managing editor of the Houston Chronicle from 2014 to 2019 and led the newspaper’s coverage of Hurricane Harvey, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for breaking news coverage. At the Chronicle, he also edited an investigative series on the denial of special education services to a quarter of a million children with disabilities that was a Pulitzer finalist for public service.

Loeb began his editing career as investigations editor at the Los Angeles Times. He subsequently served as deputy managing editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer and metro editor at The Washington Post.

As a reporter, Loeb was Southeast Asia correspondent at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and national security correspondent and Pentagon correspondent at The Washington Post, covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that climate change is the biggest and most important story on the planet,” Loeb said, “and to lead one of the country’s best environmental newsrooms at this particular moment is an incredible privilege.”

Goode founded and led the first environment/climate reporting group at The New York Times in 2009, and later covered climate change as a reporter there. In 18 years at the Times, she also worked as an assistant science editor, covered the war in Iraq, served as a national correspondent covering criminal justice and for six years was the paper’s psychology/psychiatry writer.

Before joining the Times, she was an assistant managing editor at U.S. News and World Report, editing the magazine’s Science and Society section.

She has taught environmental journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and before joining ICN was senior story editor at the San Jose Mercury News and East Bay Times. A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, she is a former AAAS Science Writing fellow, and a former fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.

Boyle specializes in strategic marketing, fundraising and digital initiatives for nonprofit organizations. Prior to joining ICN, she served as vice president for marketing and communications for Yellowstone Forever, the official nonprofit partner of Yellowstone National Park.

She also served as executive director of marketing and communications at Pepperdine University, leading marketing and communications initiatives including editorial strategy, social media, public and media relations, advertising and web. She earned her master’s degree in English literature from the University of Edinburgh and her bachelor’s degree in English, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University.

These leadership changes have come due to senior staff turnover in the wake of personal life changes. Stacy Feldman, who was co-founder and the executive editor for almost seven years, stepped down in December to pursue other opportunities. John H. Cushman, Jr. retired from a long career in journalism last August after a final five years at ICN, most recently as managing editor.

“It was bittersweet to both celebrate and say goodbye to Jack and Stacy last year,” Sassoon said. “They were instrumental in building our non-profit and making it a success, and as we stand on their shoulders we wish them well in their new endeavors.”