ProPublica announced this week the hiring of three new members of our audience team: Katie Antonsson as analyst for audience data and insights; Samantha Cooney as audience editor, search; and Isabelle Yan as audience editor, social.

Antonsson joins ProPublica from the Los Angeles Times, where she spent three years as an audience analyst. Before that, she worked at the intersection of content and data in the museum world, including the Hammer Museum in LA and the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Antonsson will focus on helping the audience team better understand ProPublica’s existing and potential readers, including their behaviors and attributes.

Before joining ProPublica, Cooney spent eight years at Time, working as a reporter, content strategy editor and, most recently, director of audience, where she led a team of editors focused on search, social, newsletters, recirculation and digital products. Cooney will help ensure that ProPublica’s journalism is reaching audiences searching for information and answers on Google and other search engines.

Yan will be leading the daily programming of major text-based social platforms, like X, Threads, Mastodon and more; developing the audience team’s push notification strategy for Apple News, the ProPublica app and our WhatsApp broadcast channel; and exploring how else we can elevate the organization’s social presence. Before ProPublica, Yan was an award-winning social media strategist and science communicator, helping to tell the story of the world’s most powerful space telescope, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, to an audience of millions on social media.

“Katie, Sam and Isabelle have such a breadth of experience,” said Kassie Navarro, ProPublica’s deputy editor for audience. “We are excited to add them to the team and feel inspired by how equipped they are to maximize our journalism’s reach and impact.”