Wired Names Katie Drummond as Its Next Leader

Katie Drummond will be the next top editor of Wired, overseeing the tech publication’s teams around the world.

Condé Nast, the publisher of Wired, announced on Thursday the appointment of Ms. Drummond as its global editorial director. Ms. Drummond joins from Vice Media, where she was the senior vice president of global news and entertainment, in charge of Vice News and the company’s digital brands.

Ms. Drummond will be the first woman to lead Wired in its 30-year history. She replaces Gideon Lichfield, who was named global editorial director in March 2021 and announced his departure in May. In a memo to the staff about his exit, Mr. Lichfield said he had decided to move on from the job and had increasingly missed “committing acts of journalism with my own two hands.” He will continue co-hosting the Wired podcast “Have a Nice Future” until at least November, he said in the memo.

Ms. Drummond, 37, was an intern at Wired in 2009. She later worked as a reporter for a national security blog run by the publication. She said in an interview on Thursday that her personal connection to the outlet as well as the opportunity to lead coverage of the tech world with a global staff made her decision to return “a no-brainer.” Wired has teams in the United States, Italy, Japan, Mexico and Britain.

“When I think about the moment we’re in now,” Ms. Drummond said, “with this very real human toll that we’re feeling and seeing around climate change, with the development of generative A.I., with the sort of unfathomable wealth and power and scope of major technology companies and big tech and the people that leads them, it feels like another sort of inflection moment in technology, in society.”

She added, “That’s exciting to me, to be at Wired at this moment in time.”

Ms. Drummond said that she expected to experiment with vertical video products, newsletters and emerging platforms to reach different audiences.

“Wired has a really unique ability to be incredibly enthusiastic and excited about technology and science and innovation while having the credibility and the brand equity to really interrogate and investigate,” she said.

Anna Wintour, the chief content officer of Condé Nast and global editorial director of Vogue, said in a statement that Ms. Drummond was “a journalist first and foremost, but also a highly original thinker.”

“Katie is exactly the right editor to lead Wired at a time where the worlds of technology and culture are shifting and colliding every single day,” she said.

Ms. Drummond left Vice this month alongside several other top editorial leaders after the company was bought out of bankruptcy for $350 million by Fortress Investment Group and other creditors.

Before her time at Vice, Ms. Drummond was executive editor of Gizmodo Media Group and of The Outline, and a deputy editor at Medium and Bloomberg. She was also a managing editor at The Verge, launching their science section. She started her career as a reporter, writing for outlets like The New Republic and Popular Science.

Ms. Drummond will start at Wired on Aug. 28.