JJ Eastwood named new CEO of HuffPost Australia

HuffPost Australia, a joint venture between The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media, has appointed  JJ Eastwood (pictured) as chief executive officer.

Eastwood, currently managing director of programmatic platform Rocket Fuel in Australia and New Zealand, will transition into the role as incumbent Chris Janz takes up a newly created position at Fairfax Media as director, publishing innovation.

The founding CEO of HuffPost Australia, Chris Janz

Prior to joining Rocket Fuel when it launched locally in 2014, Eastwood transformed eBay Australia to make it one of the country’s pre-eminent programmatic publishers. At eBay he held roles including eBay Advertising’s general manager in Australia and New Zealand, and head of advertising and commercial partnerships in Australia.

Prior to that, Eastwood was specialist sales director at Mi9/ninemsn, and held senior sales and business development roles at Fairfax Digital and News Corporation in Australia.

ALSO: “The aim is to be profitable within three years,” outgoing CEO Chris Janz told Mediaweek.

HuffPost Australia’s local management board will also include Fairfax Media’s group director of digital ventures, Guy Reypert, and CEO of digital publisher Allure Media, Jason Scott. Allure Media is a wholly owned subsidiary business of Fairfax.

Reypert said: “True to form, Chris has delivered in quickly establishing HuffPost Australia as a powerful digital brand underpinned by a strong bench of editorial talent. Chris will stay involved with HuffPost Australia while taking on a new challenge leading digital product development work and driving publishing innovation at Fairfax.

“We’re confident that JJ with his proven track record of building high performance commercial teams will continue the success achieved to date and take HuffPost Australia to even greater heights.”