Ed Sussman
Ed Sussman
Ed Sussman is a journalist, lawyer, and entrepreneur. He is currently the CEO and Board Chairman of Buzzr, the company that notably owns WhiteHatWiki.
Early Life & Education
Sussman graduated first in his class at Duke University's School of Law. While there, he was a law review editor for the Duke Law Journal. He also went on to publish law review articles for the publication, as well as the Texas Law Review.
Career
Law
Ed Sussman began his career as a journalist.
He wrote for publications among the likes of the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times .[2]
After law school, he became a staff member at the Federal Judicial Center, the official educational and research agency of the United States federal courts. He also served as a law clerk to two federal judges.[2]
Media
From 1999 to 2002, Sussman worked as a Senior Editor at Worth Magazine , a financial, wealth management and lifestyle magazine.[6]
In January 2002, he began working as the Executive Editor at Inc. Magazine and P.O.V. Magazine.[6]
In January 2004, Sussman became the Senior VP at a holding company called Mansueto Ventures. During his tenure, it held $70 million for the Inc. and Fast Company magazine brands. In addition, he ran editorial content, sales, and marketing for the magazines and eventually became the President of Mansueto Digital. He later served as Executive Vice President of Mansueto Ventures.[2]
From 2004 to 2005, Sussman served as Managing Director for Business Websites at Gruner + Jahr USA, a large magazine company owned by Bertelsmann.[6]
Buzzr
In October 2008, Ed Sussman co-founded Buzzr, a content marketing and media company that helps create websites with open source content management systems. Sussman is currently the company's CEO and Board Chairman.[6] He designed a SaaS content management system and publishing platform enabling ordinary people, businesses and groups to create highly sophisticated, social media-rich websites.[1] [2]
Within Buzzr is a company called WhiteHatWiki, a company dedicated to writing and editing Wikipedia articles. According to their website, their clients include Fortune 500 companies, particularly in the technology sector, and are often called upon in "crisis management" situations.[2]
Controversy (Wikipedia)
In March 2019, it was reported that Ed Sussman was hired by a number of companies to edit their Wikipedia pages.[3] [4] [5] Ronan Farrow wrote in his book, Catch and Kill, that Susman was hired by NBC to "unbraid references to [Noah] Oppenheim, [Harvey] Weinstein, and [Matt] Lauer on the crowdsourced encyclopedia."[7] He continued in his chapter, "Launder":
He spun the material in NBC's favor, sometimes weaving in errors.
In one edit, he proposed that the month between the Weinstein story being greenlit and running at The New Yorker be reivsed to "several months."
Other times, he simply removed all mention of the controversies.[7]
"This is one of the most blatant and naked exercises of hard corporate spin that I have encountered in [Wikipedia] and I have encountered a lot," one veteran Wikipedia editor complained.
But Sussman often prevailed: he reasserted his changes again and again, with a doggedness that unpaid Wikipedia editors could not match.
And he deployed a network of friendly accounts to launder his changes and make sure they stuck.
Several Wikipedia pages, including Oppenheim's, were stripped of evidence of the killing of the Weinstein story.
It was almost as if it had never happened.