Capital New York Hires Three Columnists As Relaunch Nears

Capital New York is gearing up for November's relaunch with several columnist hires.
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Capital New York has been hiring up reporters to cover media and politics since Politico purchased the site last month, following the Beltway site's model of going big in signature beats before later branching out.

Now that Capital is close to filling up its reporter ranks on the politics and media desks, editors are lining up several weekly city columnists for the site's early November relaunch.

Capital's first three columnists will be Jim Windolf, a Vanity Fair contributing editor who has written for several publications and started the New York Observer's "New York World" column; Joanna Molloy, a veteran Daily News gossip writer and co-author of a new book on the subject; and Glynnis MacNicol, a writer and co-founder of TheLi.st and former media editor at Business Insider and Mediaite.

The model will be more Jimmy Breslin than Joe Scarborough.

While Politico columnists, like Scarborough or National Review editor Rich Lowry, comment on political and policy debates, Capital's writers will produce reported columns that also express a point of view. They'll draw from the city columnist tradition that extends from tabloid muckraking, a la Breslin, to the New York Times' Clyde Haberman.

Capital co-editor Tom McGeveran told HuffPost the new columns will focus on "New York issues, New York personalities and New York places."

"This is a tradition in which the best columns always entertain," McGeveran said. "Sometimes they even change the minds of the city's big decision makers; better yet is when a columnist changes their plans."

The new columnists are not joining full-time, but will write weekly for the site.

However, Capital has been filling up the newsroom with full-time reporters and editors since Politico purchased the three-year-old site in September.

On the politics front, Capital's hired Daily News veteran Joanne Wasserman, the Albany Times Union's Jimmy Vielkind, the New York Post's Sally Goldenberg.

Capital media reporter Joe Pompeo will now be joined on the desk by several additional reporters, including TV Newser's Alex Weprin, Women's Wear Daily's Matthew Lynch, former Newsday and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Nicole Levy, and World Policy Journal's Johana Bhuiyan. In addition, Peter Sterne will cover media part-time for the site while finishing at Columbia University.

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