CQ Roll Call has had some pretty big announcements as of late. For example, on Monday the publication announced that they had named Christina Bellantoni Editor-in-Chief. Bellantoni returned to the publication after leaving two years ago for a job as Political Director of “PBS NewsHour.”
But what they left off a recent memo was that they’ve wiped out nearly their entire IT department, including Dennis Arndt, the head of IT whose official title was: Senior VP and Chief Technology Officer. It’s unclear why Arndt and the publication parted ways in terms of the role he was hired to do. His LinkedIN profile still lists his current employment as CQ Roll Call and his title as the aforementioned CTO. The profile says he has 23 years of experience in the software industry. Before CQ Roll Call he worked for JumpTap, Monster Worldwide, Inc. and IBM to name a few of his former employers. He worked for CQ Roll Call for the past four years and nine months.
“Plenty of empty desks and cubes,” explained a source familiar with the situation.
The Mirror requested comment from CQ Roll Call on the matter. None was forthcoming by press time.
See the memo from Keith White and notice what they left out, not what they included. See the first graph — what the hell does all that even mean? Nice and vague. The only departure they report below is Val Vocci, who left to start her own business, similar to The Hill‘s longtime advertising honcho Fran McMahon, who is leaving the publication after 16 years to run her own shop.
Folks –
As we come to the end of the calendar year, I am excited to share our major indices are on the rise– new sales and renewals are up, advertising is running well ahead of plan, and our efforts in new markets are paying off, with some exciting deals to be announced shortly. To keep our momentum and improve focus, I am altering our structure, moving from one with separate business focus, to being organized by function. This change will bring our top table into alignment, and ensure that each of our departments are operating against a single set of goals, allowing us to accelerate innovation, maximizing customer satisfaction and continue growing in new markets.
As I announced this morning, David Rapp has been appointed our Chief Content Officer, and we are recruiting for his replacement for the head of Roll Call.
We are creating a new combined product and IT group, headed up by Peter Anthony, combining all of our product and technical resources into one department in order to streamline our design, build and prioritization process. Peter becomes our Chief Product Officer, with our UX, development, product and IT teams reporting in. The innovations we have seen during the last two years have put us in extraordinary position in our market, and will continue to press forward with our world class product and IT organization.
We are creating a unified Retention Team, led by Meg Hargreaves, our new Chief Retention Officer with Sean Doyle, Megan McCoskey, Lawanda Council Carla Poore and teams reporting in. The focus will be continuing to drive customer satisfaction, which has been on the rise the past six months thanks to the strong efforts of our renewal group.
We are creating a unified Sales and Circulation Marketing team led by Rick Rockelli, with a focus on opening up new markets through improved lead generation, partnerships, and building on our growing expertise in social and direct marketing. In addition, Rick will oversee the marketing and client communication with our existing and new customers with an eye on increasing engagement. Jim Gale, Shirley Ng and Dionne Williams will report in. We will be increasing our investment and recruiting in this area.
We are bolstering our finance group with Jeff Steinman joining to centralize our business planning and bolster our sales support, and we will continue to recruit for additional planning resources.
We are expanding Beth Bronder’s role in Advertising to encompass brand marketing, with Sujata Mitra joining Beth’s group, and we will be recruiting for additional marketing support. Val Voci, who joined us three years ago is leaving the company to return to running her own business and will be serving as a consultant to Beth in the interim.
This year we have responded well to the changes we have been through, with momentum in all of our critical metrics on the rise. These changes are designed to bring us together towards our common purpose of improving innovation, customer satisfaction and expansion into new markets, with best of breed departments working towards those goals, while laying the groundwork for significant growth in the coming years.
Thank you,
Keith