German news site Zeit Online‘s editor-in-chief and Audible.de kickstarter Wolfgang Blau will take the role next April, charged with “helping (editorial and commercial teams) to grow global audiences and revenues by developing new digital platforms that deepen reader engagement and provide new opportunities to commercial partners”, GNM says.

Emily Bell left as GNM’s long-time digital content director in April 2010. Throughout the publisher’s new “digital-first” redefinition, its digital leadership has included website editor Janine Gibson, website head Georgina Henry, digital development director Tanya Cordrey, the publisher’s commercial executives and Matt McAlister, the digital strategy director of GNM’s parent Guardian Media Group.

Much of that leadership was editorial. Whilst that is clearly in Blau’s armoury, his appointment is also designed as a business strategy one. GNM has been seeking such a digital leader for some time, paidContent understands. Cordrey was recently promoted to chief digital officer but Blau will report only to GMG CEO Andrew Miller (on the commercial side) and GNM editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger (on the editorial side); Cordey leads the technology side.

A GNM spokesperson tells paidContent:

“We have never had a single person in charge of digital strategy. Given the scale of our digital audience (30.2 million monthly uniques, according to the last comScore), it’s clearly time.”

GMG CEO Miller (via release):

“His track record for developing robust business models online make him the ideal candidate to help us make the most of the commercial opportunities generated by our huge and highly-engaged audience.”

@tomhappold yes @wblau is an excellent person – v talented digital exec. Congrats to him on Guardian post

— emily bell (@emilybell) October 16, 2012

What can The Guardian expect from Blau?

The strategy at his current operation is unusual. Despite growing integration between online and print at many other publications, the weekly Die Zeit and its Zeit Online wing are run mostly separately, and even from entirely different cities.

Under Blau, Zeit Online has abandoned apps for HTML5, “tried to find a niche audience in order to charge higher advertisement rates” and focused on doing fewer things better, according to an event write-up from Global Editors Network, of which Blau is vice-president. In commercial, Zeit Online has focused on one big top-of-page ad banner and has tried to innovate even when there is not yet a business logic behind it.

In May, Editors’ Weblog reported:

“Zeit Online is not yet profitable in itself, Blau said, be he expects to reach profit soon, with revenue up 60 percent last year compared with the year before. He stressed that, although editorial and business should remain largely separate concerns, editors should understand the business of online advertising if they are to succeed on the web.”

The Guardian continues to stake out its ambition to produce “open journalism” as part of a web ecosystem.

Guardian News & Media’s latest annual operating loss grew 42 percent from £33.1 million to £44.2 million ($69 million) thanks to the costs of digital investment and of ongoing staff cutbacks. Digital revenue, a significant part of which is dating classifieds, grew 16.3 percent to £45.7 million.

The publisher’s print circulation is shrinking toward 200,000. It operates mobile and tablet subscriptions, appears to still favour keeping its website free and is looking in other nooks for revenue, like professional networks and journalism training. The company is currently trying to make redundant 70 to 100 editorial staff.

Much stall has been set in GNM’s latest mission to grow its US audience, the strategy behind which is to drive up free eyeball counts and court advertisers in the world’s biggest market. Many of The Guardian‘s New York-based editors are transplanted Brits, but their latest hire this week is Marketplace’s respected former New York bureau chief and Wall Street correspondent Heidi N. Moore, who will be finance and economics editor.

Disclosure: Guardian News & Media is an investor in paidContent’s publisher, Giga Omni Media.

On Wednesday, the news publisher announced the creation of its first chief digital officer role, a post which appears to give the subject greater corporate prominence.

The recipient is an internal promotion – Tanya Cordrey, who has directed GNM’s digital product development team of over 100 people since May 2011.

paidContent understands GNM had been considering a high-level, digital-specific leadership appointment for some time. Shazam’s executive product VP joined Cordrey’s team as product director in June. Matt McAlister is already digital strategy director for GNM’s parent, Guardian Media Group, and is working on projects including the n0tice local messaging platform.

Cordrey has previously been product director eBay, chief marketer and GM for loans site Zopa and joined GNM to build out its environment editorial output in 2008.

At the same time as Cordrey’s appointment, GNM is taking on former ITV chief marketer David Pemsel, who has been GNM’s interim chief marketing officer, as its chief commercial officer, heading not just marketing but also the whole sales operation.

That comes with executive director Adam Freeman, who had led sales, leaving to form a social advertising start-up, MutualMedia.co, and GNM’s global commercial director Chris Pelekanou leaving to become Clear Channel Outdoor’s commercial director.

The appointments of Cordrey and Pemsel show GNM adopting US-style C-level leadership structure, as is continues expanding in the States and globally.

Disclosure: Guardian News & Media is an investor in our publisher, Giga Omni Media.

Fleshman slots in to place as the latest move following a BBC Worldwide restructure this June. Global iPlayer president Jana Bennett is leaving the company; Dan Heaf became chief digital officer after being EVP and MD for consumer digital and, previously, digital director.

But Fleshman’s role, reporting to Heaf, is a more technology-centric one.

Among his projects to look out for will likely be overhauling BBCShop.com, which currently only sells physical BBC content and artefacts, to also become a digital content sales service.

BBC Worldwide does well syndicating BBC shows through third parties like iTunes Store and Blinkbox, but, both at home and abroad, lacks an own-brand means of exploiting BBC material commercially online. Heaf told me in June:

“We can operate a dual approach by making our content available through third parties and through building our own products in the UK.

“We are investing heavily in our ecommerce platform, which has traditionally been the BBC Shop. We have a much stronger strategy to make a much more compelling offering and we hope that will come alongside, potentially, locker services in the future.

“We’ll start the easiest way, which is come to the store, buy the DVD, ‘would you like to buy the digital version?’, ‘would you like to buy it in a locker service?’.

“Over time, do you get to enough scale where a subscription service makes sense? I hope so.”

BBC Worldwide’s digital entertainment operation, comprising BBC.com, games and Global iPlayer, made a loss during the last year for which figures were disclosed, 2010/11, after the cost of setting up an global ad sales outfit dragged on growing revenue.

But BBC.com individually turned a first profit in July 2011. And, although a restructure has absorbed the “digital entertainment” throughout the company, BBC Worldwide says:  ”If our digital activity was still a standalone business, it would be profitable.”

Heaf has taken pains to say the digital business “is growing fast and now represents 12.8 percent of revenue to the business, up from 8.1 percent during 2010/2011″ (via release). BBC Worldwide digital revenue was £110 million in 2011/12.

Cheesbrough will be News Corp chief technology officer (CTO), reporting to Rupert Murdoch, who says (via release):

“Paul is the rare technologist who is both a visionary and a builder. He will be a driving force as we continue to harness very real opportunities in digital that are deepening our brands’ connection with consumers.

“Paul has led a truly impressive digital reinvention of News International that has positioned our media properties at the forefront of the industry today.

“I am delighted to expand the scope of his leadership to encompass all of our publishing, media and entertainment assets.”

News Corp named John McKinley CTO in February 2011. Its chief digital officer Jon Miller left in August. CIO.co.uk: “McKinley … has departed to concentrate on a start-up project and spend more time with his family, according to a company spokesman.”

Cheesbrough has gained respect for building out a product-centric technology team with some former Apple and Google staff at the UK news publisher since joining in 2010 from The Telegraph. He has also helped implement paid content initiatives at The Times and Sunday Times, and transitioned many News International systems to Google Apps. Despite mature development, Project Alesia, a News International initiative to aggregate material from multiple publishers, could not get off the ground, due to lack of peer support.

Subscribing and logging into @thetimes is 6x faster now thanks to our awesome platform engineering team

— Paul Cheesbrough (@paulcheesbrough) August 16, 2012

In a witness witness statement presented to a London High Court case in to phone hacking in February, Cheesbrough said that all News International email archives up to September 2007 were deleted by the technology department in January 2011, in line with company policy.

At The Telegraph, Cheesbrough led the systems side of the publisher’s big relocation to a multimedia newsroom and migrated the company to Google Apps.

News Corp’s upcoming separation in to two companies (one for audio-visual entertainment; another for news and education publishing) will require a separation of systems.

News International’s CFO Susan Panuccio is also transferring to work on the split.

Genesis Media: The video ad solutions company appointed Mark Yackanich as its new CEO. Previously he served as CEO of MegaPhone Labs. Genesis Media also appointed co-founder and interim CEO Andrew Reis as chairman of the board.

PulsePoint: Alex Kuhnel joins the digital technology company as U.K. general manager. Kuhnel had worked at Experian, where he was product director of digital advertising services.

Quantcast: The audience measurement company appointed Matt White as director of agency sales. He formerly served as group director responsible for all display and search business with WPP agencies at Yahoo!

Outbrain: Outbrain hired Avi Zimak, previously advertising director for Hearst Tablet Media, as national sales director.

Kenshoo: Bearing 22 years of enterprise software sales experience, Ted Krantz has joined Kenshoo as senior VP.

Compass Labs: Satish Veerapuneni, formerly an engineer at Intel, has joined the company as their product manager. Alex Vulakh was named VP of sales and business development. He had been the senior director of advertising sales for Business Insider.

Kenshoo Social: Kenshoo Social has hired Peter O’Sullivan as VP of sales. Formerly he led sales, account management, marketing and research teams at Twelvefold Media.

Xaxis: Damien Healy joins Xaxis as director of technology and product for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Healy previously developed data and technology strategies at Havas agencies.

TubeMogul: Phu Truong joins TubeMogul’s Singapore team as part of the company’s expansion into Southeast Asia. Truong previously served as VP of commercial and operations at BBC.com and as director of international advertising sales at the Wall Street Journal.

Simon Fox, who leaves as CEO of HMV Group this week, has been appointed CEO of Trinity Mirror, which publishes over 130 regional papers, 500 regional websites, classified sites and the national Mirror, People, Daily Record and Sunday Mail.

Fox is appointed by Trinity Mirror’s new chair David Grigson, having shared the board together at social book service aNobii before HMV sold it to Sainsbury’s. Grigson (via release):

“Simon will provide the strategic leadership the company needs. His experience gives him a current and in-depth understanding of how consumers’ habits are changing and the technology that is driving these changes.”

Trinity Mirror has long attracted consternation for protecting profit with cuts while its underlying business suffers. It ousted CEO Sly Bailey – who recognised many of the problems but, during the economic downturn, insisted newspapers’ travails were somewhat cyclical – in May, amid growing complaint over her salary.

Trinity Mirror is the archetype of a newspaper publisher that needs to re-invent its product – especially exposed to the challenged local news market.

The Mirror redesigned its website earlier this year but has been driving crassly down-market, with celebrity titillation seemingly designed to plow the same low-brow furrow charted successfully by Mail Online.

Digital revenue growth has slowed down, challenged by a glut of competition for its MirrorBingo gambling website.

There are certainly parallels between Fox’s last and next employment sectors. Earlier this month, HMV forecast physical music sales on which it depends will shed another fifth this year and each year for the next three years.

Fox’s HMV tenure was marked by an attempt to sell in-store digital entertainment hardware on which consumers might play content. This year, he averted a collapse of the business only when music labels and movie studios agreed not to call in overdue payments for plastic discs but to accept HMV Group equity instead of the money.

Trinity Mirror’s digital strategy has see-sawed in recent years. In 2010, Trinity Mirror made its group-wide digital director and its regionals digital director redundant. National digital publisher Matt Kelly, who carved out soccer and celebrity coverage in to two distinct sites, recently left after 18 years with the publisher. Nationals digital managing director Chris Ellis remains aboard. Last month, tech exec Matthew Colebourne became Ellis’ director of new business development, charged with introducing new digital revenue streams.

Fox is the latest non-news publishing appointment to run a newspaper company, after Microsoft’s Ashley Highfield took the helm at Johnston Press and BBC director-general Mark Thompson was named to lead New York Times Company.

Meredith Corp: Faith Gingold has been named associate publisher of sales for Ladies’ Home Journal, reporting to Publisher Diane D. Malloy. Most recently, she was eastern advertising director of Southern Living and Southernliving.com. She also served in that role for Health and Health.com.

Undertone: Joe Del Toro has joined the interactive marketing company as CFO. He previously was trading card company Topps’ CFO. Wayne Gattinella, former WebMD CEO, also joins as a board director.

NewPoint Media Group: David Vining joins as VP of digital media. He comes to NewPoint from AIMCO, where he was VP of marketing.

DKC: The company expands its Southern California operation as it has appointed Melissa Gotto as VP to lead the Los Angeles office. She previously was VP of entertainment content at Bender|Helper Impact (B/HI) and oversaw the social media department.

Kenshoo Social: The company welcomes three new hires: Todd Herrold as senior director of product marketing, Paul Kogan as director of East Coast sales and Brian Quinn as director of West Coast sales. Herrold was formerly Kenshoo Local’s director of product, strategy and management. Kogan joins the company from Merchantry, where he was SVP of business development. Quinn was formerly head of business development for Experian Techlightment.

Digitas: Matt Jacobs, formerly of McCann Worldgroup, will now lead strategy for the new Digitas San Francisco office. Most recently, Jacobs was founder and principal of sales and marketing consulting firm Telegraphe Partners.

Digitas also hired Doug Speidel as SVP of creative, and Fritz Desir in the new role of VP/group director, head of experience design for the New York office. Both will report to Matthew D’Ercole, EVP/executive creative director.

Immediate Media: The company has appointed Tony Macklin director of product development and strategy, reporting to CEO Tom Bureau. With over 20 years in senior product and marketing roles, Macklin comes from Ancestry.com where he was VP of product. Prior to that, he held brand management roles at Proctor & Gamble.

[x + 1]: Peter Moritz has been named SVP of sales for the enterprise data management platform provider. He had previously been running his own marketing strategy consulting firm, PWM Associates.

Movieclips: The YouTube content network has signed on Chip Russo as global head of sales and Brian Aucoin as VP of branded entertainment and packaging. Russo comes from Collective, where he was SVP of video, while Aucoin previously worked with 4D as VP of client partnerships.

TruEffect: The online ads company has expanded its software development team. Based in the Colorado headquarters and reporting to Robert Rust, VP of engineering, the new hires are: Gabe Nydick, senior software architect; Glynne Casteel, senior software architect; Eric Eide, software developer; Ashish Rangole, software architect.

PulsePoint: Monica Seebohm has signed on as VP of western sales. A 12-year digital media veteran, Seebohm was most recently regional director of west sales for AudienceScience.

Operative: Thomas Bianco has been hired as the company’s new CRO, leading business development and sales. He comes from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he most recently was managing director.

MXM: Meredith Corp customer engagement agency has promoted Jack Mcleod to SVP/GM for MXM’s social practice from interim GM. He’ll continue to be based in the company’s Arlington, Virginia offices and will lead the social practice team. Prior to serving as interim GM, Macleod was VP of sales. Earlier in his career, he led sales at Klipmart which was eventually acquired by DoubleClick.

TruEffect: The advertising tech company has appointed 14-year marketing veteran Theresa DeGroote director of media strategy & planning. She previously worked with McAfee, Phlare and MatchLogic.

Yahoo: Hillary Frey is now editor-in-chief of Yahoo News and Aaron Task is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Frey will work closely with media partner ABC News and Task will remain host of “The Daily Ticker”. Frey had joined Yahoo News as managing editor in 2001, having held the same title at Adweek. Prior to joining Yahoo in 2008, Task was editor-at-large at TheStreet.com.