Dafna Linzer, the executive editor of Politico, is stepping down from her role just a year after joining the company.
In an email to staff, Matthew Kaminski, the publication’s editor in chief, said that Ms. Linzer had decided to leave Politico later this month.
“We have always been aligned on the goal of making Politico the world’s premier source of news on politics, policy and power. But we saw ourselves diverging over the best way to get there,” Mr. Kaminski wrote. “Dafna and I first began discussing the possibility of this move last December.”
Ms. Linzer, a former managing editor for politics at NBC News and MSNBC, joined Politico in March 2022, shortly after the publication was bought by Axel Springer, a German media behemoth, for more than $1 billion.
Reporting to Mr. Kaminski, she oversaw daily coverage across the newsroom, focusing on Washington and politics. Days after Ms. Linzer joined, Politico published a groundbreaking scoop: a leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court that would strike down Roe v. Wade.
In an email to the newsroom on Thursday, Ms. Linzer said the last year had been “more rewarding than I could have imagined,” adding: “The greatest joy has been steering a newsroom of hungry, gritty, passionate journalists whose work reached new heights.”
Ms. Linzer had become exasperated by the publication’s structure, in which three executive editors report to Mr. Kaminski, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
Goli Sheikholeslami, the chief executive of Politico, said in an email to staff on Thursday that she wanted to take the opportunity to answer whether the company was organized in the right way.
“Since I arrived a year ago, I have often pondered Politico’s org chart, and wondered if it is the right one for a fast-growing organization,” she wrote in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times.
Ms. Sheikholeslami said that she had asked Mr. Kaminski and John Harris, a founder of Politico who now serves as global editorial chair, to reassess the U.S. newsroom’s setup.
