Editor, Writer
Samantha is the Executive Editor, Strategy for BuzzFeed News, where she is responsible for building a sustainable business around the news operation, as well as overseeing the Engagement & Publishing and Operations teams.
Prior to coming to BuzzFeed News, Samantha was the editorial director for audio at The New York Times, where in three years she built an entirely new and wildly successful audio business within the company. It began when she returned from maternity leave in the fall of 2015 and was tasked with “looking into whether The Times should get into audio.” That quickly became putting together a business plan and investment ask and building what's now a team of 25-and-growing audio producers and editors and a portfolio of shows that includes The Daily, which was the most downloaded podcast in the world last year, and Caliphate, which won a Peabody Award and was a Pulitzer finalist. In addition to being an editorial success, the audio operation is also a financial success, bringing in eight figures of incremental ad revenue and helping to drive subscriptions.
With more than a decade of experience working across product, technology, design, marketing, advertising and the creative/journalistic side, Samantha is an effective cross-functional leader who can mobilize people from different disciplines around a shared vision. She has extensive experience grappling with and enacting the workflow and cultural changes necessary to transform legacy media companies into digital-first operations.
Samantha first got into journalism in college, where she founded a feature magazine called Kitsch that's still going strong. At Kitsch she got the taste of starting something new and playing all roles: not only did she assign, edit and write, but she also designed the entire issue, sold ads, raised money from grants, and managed printing and distribution.
Since then she has worked at Newsweek, Slate and The New Yorker, before landing at The Times as the digital editor of the Sunday magazine. While at Slate, she recorded and produced podcasts of the "Explainer" column and wrote and starred in a series of videos. She co-wrote "Twentysomething," a book on the culture and science of being young, with her mother, Robin Marantz Henig.
Samantha lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two daughters, and cat, Henry. During her time in New York, she has been an active volunteer with Girls Write Now and the News Literacy Project.
Twitter: @scootes
E-mail: samantha [dot] henig [at] gmail [dot] com
Prior to coming to BuzzFeed News, Samantha was the editorial director for audio at The New York Times, where in three years she built an entirely new and wildly successful audio business within the company. It began when she returned from maternity leave in the fall of 2015 and was tasked with “looking into whether The Times should get into audio.” That quickly became putting together a business plan and investment ask and building what's now a team of 25-and-growing audio producers and editors and a portfolio of shows that includes The Daily, which was the most downloaded podcast in the world last year, and Caliphate, which won a Peabody Award and was a Pulitzer finalist. In addition to being an editorial success, the audio operation is also a financial success, bringing in eight figures of incremental ad revenue and helping to drive subscriptions.
With more than a decade of experience working across product, technology, design, marketing, advertising and the creative/journalistic side, Samantha is an effective cross-functional leader who can mobilize people from different disciplines around a shared vision. She has extensive experience grappling with and enacting the workflow and cultural changes necessary to transform legacy media companies into digital-first operations.
Samantha first got into journalism in college, where she founded a feature magazine called Kitsch that's still going strong. At Kitsch she got the taste of starting something new and playing all roles: not only did she assign, edit and write, but she also designed the entire issue, sold ads, raised money from grants, and managed printing and distribution.
Since then she has worked at Newsweek, Slate and The New Yorker, before landing at The Times as the digital editor of the Sunday magazine. While at Slate, she recorded and produced podcasts of the "Explainer" column and wrote and starred in a series of videos. She co-wrote "Twentysomething," a book on the culture and science of being young, with her mother, Robin Marantz Henig.
Samantha lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two daughters, and cat, Henry. During her time in New York, she has been an active volunteer with Girls Write Now and the News Literacy Project.
Twitter: @scootes
E-mail: samantha [dot] henig [at] gmail [dot] com