Crooked Media expands executive leadership team

Crooked Media, a progressive independent media company that delivers bold content to entertain, inform and inspire action, announced today the appointment of several new executives to help support the company’s continued expansion of its news and politics offerings. Madeleine Haeringer has been named Executive Vice President and General Manager of News and Programming; Reid Cherlin has been appointed Executive Producer of Politics; Dariush Brizuela-Nothaft has been named Senior Vice President of Community and Partnerships; and Crystal Ponzio-Busto has been elevated to Executive Vice President of Marketing.

As the 2024 election cycle approaches, Crooked Media is continuing to invest in news and expanding the community infrastructure to provide fans with opportunities to connect, take action and get involved.

Leading Crooked’s News team will be Haeringer and Cherlin who will oversee content expansions and more breaking news coverage across Crooked’s podcasts. Prior to joining Crooked, Haeringer served as Senior Vice President of Editorial for NBC News, where she was responsible for guiding the editorial agenda across the entire news division. She also led NBC’s audio business, which became a top five audio publisher under her leadership. Cherlin also comes to Crooked from NBC News, where he was Managing Editor for Podcasts, overseeing #1 hits Southlake—which won a Peabody Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—as well as American Radical and Tiffany Dover is Dead, among others. Joining the team led by Haeringer and Cherlin are Alyona Minkovski, David Toledo, Farrah Safari, and from The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, and Gimlet Media respectively.

Brizuela-Nothaft, meanwhile, has been tapped to lead the Community and Partnerships team, which will focus on the newly-launched “Friends of the Pod” subscription community, e-commerce, live events and partnerships. Brizuela-Nothaft is a seasoned executive with experience in marketing, creative, and business development, working for companies like Disney, SoulPancake, and Maker Studios prior to joining Crooked.

Additionally, Ponzio-Busto has been elevated to Executive Vice President of Marketing. In this new role, she will continue to lead marketing, communications and audience development across Crooked’s broad roster of content including news, politics, entertainment and culture. Prior to Crooked, she held marketing positions at Hulu and Netflix.

“We are thrilled to expand our executive leadership team with these amazingly talented and smart individuals,” said Lucinda Treat, CEO of Crooked Media. “We are always working to tell impactful and important stories, expand our slate of programming, and attract the next wave of Crooked fans to the network, and I know this team will help us do all of these things. We look forward to informing and getting people involved as we head towards 2024.”

To date, Crooked Media has launched more than 30 podcasts and digital series since its founding in 2017. The current lineup of ambitious, award-winning storytelling and analysis generates more than 22 million monthly downloads. For more information, please visit www.crooked.com.