• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, September 6, 2006

Mark Whitaker will leave his post as editor of The Washington Post Company's Newsweek magazine to move to the online side of the business. Starting Oct. 1, he will serve in the newly created position of vice president, editor in chief of new ventures at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.

Among his new duties, Whitaker will develop new online initiatives for the company--potentially tapping existing reporters and writers as well as outside companies. "The Washington Post so far is known mostly for its news sites--WashingtonPost.com, Newsweek.com and Slate.com--so initially I'm going to be looking at ventures in other areas," Whitaker told OnlineMediaDaily. "Obviously, we'll be looking at sites that have good traffic potential and advertising potential," Whitaker said.

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive already has been faster than many of its peers to experiment online. Last year, for example, the WashingtonPost.com was one of the first newspaper sites to provide a Technorati link that sent readers to blog posts about its stories. More recently, the company launched a blog network; it also is expected to allow readers to start posting comments in response to news stories.

But, although the company has adopted several Web 2.0 trends, Whitaker said that he doesn't anticipate the company will turn to sites with purely consumer-created content. "Completely user generated sites--MySpace, YouTube, and so forth--even though they've generated tremendous traffic, I'm not sure they are or will be tremendously successful in advertising terms," he said. "Advertisers like to feel they're in a quality environment they can rely on."

He added that he intended to seek out people with visions for expanding the business, as opposed to bringing on big-name writers. "At Newsweek, I was all about hiring stars with strong voices so that people would read the magazine," he said. "Here, I'm going to be looking, at least initially, at people who have strong ideas for sites and can be great editors and partners in putting the sites together."

The Web site of rival Time magazine, by contrast, has recently added several high-profile authors. In June, Time hired former Wonkette editor Ana Marie Cox to write a weekly online and monthly print column. Time also forged a deal with journalist Andrew Sullivan to add his blog, The Daily Dish, to the magazine's Web site.