Managing money can be difficult, especially in a world of crypto, corporate monopolies, and credit cards, but Vox’s senior correspondent Emily Stewart is here to help navigate with a biweekly column from The Goods, ‘The Big Squeeze’. Stewart will examine the little ways in which our economic system controls and manipulates the average person. Looking at the question “Is there fair consumption under capitalism?” Stewart will dive into the tricks and scams that make it feel impossible to financially navigate the world. 

In her first piece, Stewart examines the world of sports betting. As an amateur sports better and not an avid sports watcher, Stewart quickly found herself excited about her recent parlay bet. In between bets and text, Stewart questioned the morality, and the overall business of sports betting. Since its legalization in certain states, large media conglomerates have been sinking money into this endeavor. Sports betting has taken over ad spaces with companies such as FanDuel, DraftKings, MGM, and more. (Disclosure: The sports site SB Nation, which is owned by Vox’s parent company, Vox Media, has a partnership with DraftKings.) Stewart looks at who the real winners are in the sports betting industry, the pros and cons it ascertains for businesses and states, what users give up — including data — when we opt-in, as well as the addiction that often comes along with it.

Stewart is a senior correspondent for Vox and writes about the intersection of business, politics, and the economy. She is interested in how people experience the forces of capitalism and money. Prior to joining Vox, Emily covered politics at The Street, including the rise of Donald Trump and the stock market’s reaction to politics and policy. She graduated from Columbia University. 

Don’t miss an issue of ‘The Big Squeeze.’ Sign up here to receive it in your inbox twice a month. 

Today marks Noel King’s debut episode as co-host of Vox’s flagship daily news podcast, Today, Explained alongside co-host and Vox Audio Creative Director Sean Rameswaram. In their first episode together – also the show’s 1,000th episode – King reports on a “civil divorce” underway in Atlanta. 

King’s on-the-ground reporting looks at the wealthy Buckhead neighborhood where some residents are moving to secede from Atlanta proper due to rising poverty and crime rates. King spoke with community members who are pro and anti-secession. This episode provides an intimate look at an issue that illustrates the broader divisions plaguing the country from a community in Anchorage, Alaska to states like Idaho and Oregon. 

King and Rameswaram will share hosting duties going forward, allowing the show to be more experimental in style and format, do more field reporting and longer-term projects, and be more responsive to listener questions and requests. 

Today, Explained will be making its terrestrial radio debut this spring through a partnership with WNYC. 

King joined Vox in January from NPR, where she was a co-host of Morning Edition and Up First. She was part of a team of NPR journalists who won an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2020 for their reporting along the US/Mexico border on the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy. In addition, she has reported on a range of issues, from the U.S.’s 2021 election to the Arab Spring. 

Swati Sharma, Vox editor-in-chief, and Ryan McCarthy, editorial director for politics, policy, and society, today announced that Natalie Jennings is joining the network as senior politics editor to run our growing political team. Natalie Jennings joins Vox after 11 years at the Washington Post, where she was deputy Washington editor, editing coverage of the Biden White House and Congress and previously covered three presidential elections on the national politics and video teams. Recently, Jennings has shepherded deep looks at the Biden administration’s promises, Kyrsten Sinema’s negotiation style, Kamala Harris’s staff exodus, and the political fortunes of swing district Democrats.

“Natalie has a deep understanding of where the political conversation needs to go,” Sharma said. “Her empathetic management style and her experience running excellent political coverage are qualities that make her an incredibly strong leader.” 

“Natalie is a world-class newsroom leader, editor, and mentor to reporters, and she’s overseen some of the most distinctive political journalism of the last several years,” McCarthy said. “Political coverage is so vital to Vox and its audience, and we’re over the moon that Natalie will be leading this team as it expands.”

Previously, Natalie was the editor of The Fix, the Post’s signature politics blog. In that role, she managed a team of reporters and video editors who produced analysis, explainers, multimedia projects, and the 5-Minute Fix newsletter.  Natalie has also done standout multimedia work, serving as a senior producer in the Post’s video department and holding roles managing the Post’s mobile app and audience strategy, and as a blogger and social media manager for the Post’s WhoRunsGov site. 

Jennings also has deep Washington, DC, roots. She’s worked as a Senate staffer and a legislative analyst at a government affairs firm. 

She is a graduate of LSU and lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with her husband and two daughters. 

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.