Yoni is currently the Executive Director, Product Development at Philly.com, where he is taking an existing product portfolio and turning it revenue positive – ensuring that revenue and traffic develop in tandem.
One of his initial successes was Philly.com Sports. Yoni oversaw a complete rebuilding (including design, staffing, vendor analysis, p&l modeling and marketing and branding) of this bedrock channel. Since its re-launch, the channel has seen revenue and user engagement grow MoM and YoY. And just recently, Philly.com Sports was named one of the top 10 sports sites by the Associated Press Sports Editors.
Yoni is also working on a broader integration of ecommerce, building a strategy for video monetization and syndication and, working with five product managers, developing niche products including women’s, music and restaurants.
Yoni joined Philly.com, one of the top 30 news websites in the country, in 2008 as Executive Producer. He brought a metrics-based approach to the management the site’s Content Team. Working with about a dozen online staffers and videographers, he grew monthly site traffic from 30M to 70M+ page views.
During his time as Executive Producer, Yoni participated in a complete redesign of Philly.com and an expansion of its news gathering capacity within the newsrooms of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News.
Before joining Philly.com, Yoni worked at Dow Jones Local Media Group where he focused on online content development, distribution and strategy. Yoni coached newsrooms staffs, helping them develop online content and increase user engagement. He also worked with the corporate web development team to ensure that editorial content had a home in new products.
Yoni got his introduction to journalism working as an editorial assistant at New York Newsday during its heyday in the ‘80s. He was fortunate to learn from the likes of Jimmy Breslin, Murray Kempton and Sydney Schamberg. Hired as a weekly newspaper Editor at the Bergen Newspaper Group in 1997, Yoni was in charge of the production of three weekly newspapers and was involved in the launch and production of a weekly entertainment magazine.
In 1998 Yoni joined the Herald News, a daily newspaper in Passaic County, New Jersey. Under his editorship, the Herald News received the New Jersey Press Association’s General Excellence Award and his reporters received recognition by the Deadline Club and the Society of Professional Journalists.
In October 2005 he joined the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, NJ as Metro Editor and was also instrumental in the expansion of the newspaper’s online presence.
Yoni founded Jewish New Jersey, a free weekly newspaper, in July 2006. He served as Executive Editor and was President of its parent company. In addition, Yoni conceived and built JNJ’s online presence.
As an editor, Yoni has traveled to Israel and Palestine to report on the start of the second Intifada, and also to Poland, to report on the country’s westernization.
DISCLAIMER: The ideas expressed in the blog are mine and mine alone and do not reflect those of my employers (past or present).
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