Jason Seiken

Jason Seiken is a media executive best known for launching The Washington Post on the web and for transforming PBS into a leader in the digital media space.

A dual citizen of the United States and United Kingdom, he also was the first American to run the newsroom of a major British newspaper, though his short tenure as editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph was considered controversial.

Seiken began his career as a newspaper reporter, columnist and editor, first at the Schenectady Gazette (New York) and then at the Quincy Patriot Ledger (Massachusetts).

In 1993, Seiken was one of 12 US journalists awarded the highly competitive John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University, where he spent the year at the Graduate School of Business. (He now serves on the Knight Fellowship Board of Visitors.)

In 1994, Seiken was hired to lead the Washington Post’s nascent digital team and quickly rose to become editor-in-chief of the Post’s digital subsidiary. Seiken subsequently hired and led the team that launched washingtonpost.com.

At launch, the site was hailed by the rival Philadelphia Inquirer as “startlingly good” and a “tour de force” that outshined Michael Kinsley’s new high-profile digital magazine Slate.

The original washingtonpost.com included several industry innovations. It was the first newspaper site to update around the clock; the first to include significant non-newspaper content such as the first chapters of books; and the first to devote significant resources to creating online community that gave users a voice.

As early as 1995, Seiken talked publicly about the importance of social media, which at the time was called online community. “We think one of the most important parts of our service [is] creating a virtual community. Perhaps even more so than providing news, being able to create a community is what is going to make online services successful,” he told Frontline in 1995.

In 1997, Seiken joined AOL, where he led the 18 AOL content channels, including News, Sports, and Entertainment, during the time of their greatest growth as AOL become the dominant online service internationally with more than 34 million subscribers.

In early 2001, he transferred to London to head programming for AOL UK and, later, AOL Europe. He helped drive traffic gains and monetization that contributed to division’s two-year turnaround from $600 million annual loss to more than $135 million profitability.

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Wikipedia