The last person hired as the top editor of Teen Vogue resigned before her start date. Now, the wide-ranging Condé Nast online publication is trying again, with the announcement on Monday that Versha Sharma, a managing editor at the news website NowThis, will be its next editor in chief.
“Versha is a natural leader with a global perspective and deep understanding of local trends and issues — from politics and activism to culture and fashion — and their importance to our audience,” Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue and the chief content officer of Condé Nast, said in a statement.
Ms. Sharma, 34, was in charge of news and cultural coverage at NowThis, a site owned by Group Nine Media, the publisher of Thrillist, The Dodo, Seeker and PopSugar. She was part of a team that received an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2018 for a documentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
She was named to the job nearly two months after Alexi McCammond, a former Axios journalist, resigned after more than 20 Teen Vogue staff members publicly condemned tweets she had posted a decade earlier.
Ms. McCammond’s old tweets included derogatory stereotypes about Asians and slurs for gay people. She had apologized for the tweets in 2019 and deleted them. She apologized again after they were resurfaced in March and resigned from the Teen Vogue job before her first scheduled day.
Asked about the furor, Ms. Sharma said in an interview: “I don’t really feel it’s my place to comment on that. All I can say is I share the values of the Teen Vogue staff and audience, and I’m very excited to work with them and work together moving forward.” She added that Teen Vogue “does a good job of showing how interconnected everything is, whether it’s fashion or politics or culture.”
Danielle Kwateng, Teen Vogue’s executive editor, published a note to readers in April acknowledging “the pain and frustration caused by resurfaced social media posts.” She added that the staff of the publication, which is known as much for its progressive stances and essays on social issues as its fashion and beauty coverage, would “evolve with our readers, because we can’t be the young person’s guide to saving the world without you.”
Ms. Sharma is on the board of the Online News Association and previously worked for TalkingPointsMemo, MSNBC.com and Vocativ. Her start date at Teen Vogue is May 24.
