Disney Names Ben Sherwood to Be President of ABC News
BusinessweekDec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Walt Disney Co. named Ben Sherwood president of ABC News to replace David Westin, who announced in September he would step down at the end of the year.
Sherwood, 46, will oversee editorial, programming and digital operations at ABC’s global news business, including broadcast TV, radio and the Internet, Burbank, California-based Disney said today in an e-mailed statement. He will report to Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney/ABC Television Group.
Disney cited Sherwood’s entrepreneurial background. In addition to working previously at ABC and NBC news, Sherwood is a novelist whose works include “The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud,” which became a film. In 2009, he founded TheSurvivorsClub.org for people coping with disaster.
“They need more people who are conversant with new media, social media and the blogosphere,” Hal Vogel, an independent media analyst in New York, said in an interview today. “They need to be able to reach a different demographic who has a very different view of how the world works.”