Vox continues to expand newsroom with new hires and promotions

Vox editor-in-chief Swati Sharma today announced the promotions of Samantha Oltman, to senior editor of Recode, and Emily Stewart, to senior correspondent, and the hires of Gabby Fernandez, as senior audience strategy editor, and Caitlin PenzeyMoog, as senior copy editor.

As Recode’s senior editor, Oltman will expand on the work she’s done since joining Vox Media in 2019 to lead the relaunch of Recode on Vox.com. She’s refocused Recode to report for a broader audience by both breaking and explaining news at the intersection of the tech world and everything else. Over the past few years, Samantha has been an empathetic leader with a sense of mission to provide understanding around the biggest stories in tech. She has also helped lead and executive produced Recode’s narrative and short-form podcasts Land of the Giants and Recode Daily, and is executive producing a forthcoming cable TV documentary series based on Land of the Giants. Prior to joining Vox, Oltman was the deputy tech and business editor for BuzzFeed News.

As senior correspondent, Stewart will deepen her coverage of how markets affect people in their everyday lives. She first joined Vox as a reporter in 2017 and was most recently a senior reporter covering the intersection of business, politics, and the economy. Prior to joining Vox, Stewart covered politics at The Street, including the rise of Donald Trump and how the stock market responded to political and policy developments.

Gabby Fernandez joins Vox as senior audience strategy editor. In this role, Fernandez will provide critical support to Vox’s editorial teams around priority projects: helping create conversations around text reporting, spearheading crowdsourcing efforts, and broadly revamping how Vox approaches promotion strategy. She was previously an audience engagement editor at the Los Angeles Times, where she focused on making the Times’ news as widely read as possible. Most recently, she was embedded in the arts and entertainment section. Fernandez co-led the Times’ Instagram strategy, emphasized the importance of online news presentation, and worked to bring quality journalism to bilingual readers. She began her role this week.

In her new role as senior copy editor for the style and standards team, Caitlin PenzeyMoog will lead fact-checking across Vox audio, text and video. She was previously the managing editor at The A.V. Club and is the author of the book On Spice. She began her role this week.