Vanity Fair’s digital news vertical is down another editor.
Benjamin Landy, an editor at The Hive, the magazine’s popular and newsier digital-first vertical, is leaving for Fast Company, where he will be executive editor of digital. Landy has been with Vanity Fair for four years, starting as a senior editor and being named deputy editor of The Hive in April. That was just after Jon Kelly, the founding editor of The Hive under VF’s then editor in chief Graydon Carter, left the publication. Since Carter’s departure at the start of 2018, VF, along with all remaining Condé Nast publications, has been dealing with much reduced budgets.
Kelly has been largely off the grid since leaving VF and has yet to pop back up as a high-profile hire at another publication. The magazine did not really replace him either, but gave John Homans the editor title and the responsibilities that come with, while keeping all of the duties he held in his previous role as executive editor. He took up that job in 2017, following a couple of years at Bloomberg and New York Magazine before that.
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As for Landy, his new boss, Fast Company editor Stephanie Mehta (who worked at VF under Carter, as well) cited his work editing online features and news, producing the weekly Hive podcast and overseeing the magazine list for VF’s annual summit as cause for his hire.
“It was a privilege to work with Ben during my two years at Vanity Fair; he’s a generous, smart and fearless editor, and he understands and shares Fast Company’s commitment to covering business and news through the lenses of innovation, creativity, design, leadership, social impact, and technology,” Mehta wrote in a memo to staff.
For his part, Landy said in an e-mail he’s “excited to be embarking on a new adventure,” and pointed to Fast Company’s focus on long-form stories, specifically those looking to show “how technology is alchemizing culture and finance” as motivation for leaving the higher profile VF.
“As executive editor, I hope to contribute to that legacy by doubling down on all of the things that make Fast Company great: rich journalism, incredible design, and bold thinking about business, leadership, social impact, and technology,” Landy said. “As ever, my belief is that smart reporting and sophisticated writing sells itself.”
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