New Appointments

Helen Lewis was today named Deputy Editor of the New Statesman, succeeding Jon Bernstein who is set to become Digital Director of Progressive Media International, the publisher of the New Statesman. The changes will take effect from 21 May 2012. 

In a further move, Caroline Crampton will join the team as Web Editor early next month. Crampton is currently at Total Politics and was instrumental in that publication’s successful online relaunch last year.  

Lewis joined the New Statesman as an Assistant Editor in 2010 from the Daily Mail, where she had worked on the features commissioning desk. In her new role, she will work across the magazine and the relaunched website.

Bernstein was appointed Deputy Editor in November 2009, splitting his role between the magazine and online and oversaw a period of significant traffic growth. During his spell, the Staggers rolling blog was launched and an array of emerging writers and bloggers joined the team. These included Laurie Penny, David Allen Green and Rowenna Davis. Last November, Bernstein was named Website Editor of the Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME). 

Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman, said: 

These changes follow a period of excellent progress for newstatesman.com. Jon, who will continue to be a valued colleague, leaves behind a redesigned and reinvigorated web operation, and I’m sure Helen, for whom I have the highest regard, will build on his success. Caroline was with us as an intern and I have monitored her progress at Total Politics. It’s great to have her back on the staff.

Newstatesman.com traffic growth

Traffic to the New Statesman’s recently relaunched website has reached a new record high. In the first quarter of 2012, monthly unique visitors to newstatesman.com topped 800,000, an increase of 231 per cent since the fourth quarter of 2009, when the site was previously relaunched. For comparison, the Spectator reported [2] 380,000 unique users a month in 2011.

The site's growth has been aided by a series of exclusives, including Hugh Grant's exposure [3] of phone-hacking, a newly discovered poem by Ted Hughes, the Archbishop of Canterbury's attack [4] on the coalition government, Christopher Hitchens's final interview [5] (conducted by Richard Dawkins) and David Miliband's recent essay [6] on “Reassurance” Labour. 

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