News Corp. has announced that Bedi Singh will step down as chief financial officer on March 1. Susan Panuccio, currently cfo of News Corp. Australia, will succeed him. Executive chairman Rupert Murdoch said in the release: “Through his astute financial management of key acquisitions and divestitures, and with the prudent institution of cost controls across the businesses, Bedi has helped News Corp. weather the challenges of this era better than its peers, and put it on firm footing for long-term growth and profitability.” Singh, who has served as cfo since 2013, will continue to advise the company on digital property interests in India, while pursuing other opportunities.
Carolyn Gill has joined Clarkson Potter as marketing manager. Previously she was a marketing manager at the New York City Food & Wine Festival. In addition, Natasha Martin has been promoted to senior publicist.
Irish-born author Frank Delaney, 74, died on February 21 after a stroke. Delaney’s books included the novel Ireland, the nonfiction book Simple Courage, and his ongoing podcast on James Joyce’s Ulysses. A new novel was forthcoming from Putnam, but the publisher has not decided yet whether the project will move forward.
Festivals
PEN America’s annual World Voices Literary Festival in New York will proceed without Israeli government sponsorship this year, after having received such support in four of the last five years. Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign For the Boycott of Israel celebrates the change, and notes that they had enlisted signatures from 240 writers, poets, and publishers in their call for PEN America to reject Israeli government support. Those efforts included citing criticism from PEN International in the past for the Israeli government’s “killings and the reported deliberate targeting of certain journalists, media organizations, and their infrastructures: and “the practice of administrative detention against journalists and other writers.”
In an email, executive director of PEN America Suzanne Nossel told representatives of organizations calling for the rejection of Israeli sponsorship, “Each year, our sources of funding for the Festival change depending on a wide range of factors.”
Launching
BuzzTrace, a new online software that helps authors manage multi-platform social networking and analytics, will launch March 16. The program was created in conjunction with Ingram Content Group’s 1440 Accelerator, a fourteen-week startup program.