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Inside New York Focus

New York Focus Adds Events Manager and Managing Editor

New York Focus is growing bigger and better with its first-ever events manager and a permanent hire for its managing editor role.

New York Focus   ·   July 24, 2026
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One of the best parts of working at New York Focus is meeting our readers and having in-person discussions about the future of New York. We’re so excited to announce that we will soon be doing that much more often, with the help of our new events manager, Kara King. 

Kara started at Focus this month and will be working to bring a community around our work and enliven New York civic life. She’ll create events from intimate member salons and neighborhood storytelling nights to public forums, teach-ins, and live journalism. Kara previously produced events featuring top government, business, and advocacy leaders at the Washington, DC-based outlet The Hill.

Meet Kara and other Focus staff at our summer happy hour next Tuesday, July 28! And if you have ideas for Kara — events we should put on, speakers you’d want to hear from, organizations we should partner with — reach out at kara@nysfocus.com.

We’re also thrilled to welcome Cassi Feldman as our permanent managing editor. Cassi has served as interim managing editor since January and has become an indispensable part of the team. She has previously served as editor-in-chief at Type Investigations and senior enterprise editor at NBC News Digital, and she’s also worked at newsrooms including 60 Minutes, Chalkbeat New York, and City Limits.

Cassi would love to hear from you! Reach out at cassi@nysfocus.com.

At New York Focus, our central mission is to help readers better understand how New York really works. If you think this article succeeded, please consider supporting our mission and making more stories like this one possible.

New York is an incongruous state. We’re home to fabulous wealth — if the state were a country, it would have the tenth largest economy in the world — but also the highest rate of wealth inequality. We’re among the most diverse – but also the most segregated. We passed the nation’s most ambitious climate law — but haven’t been meeting its deadlines and continue to subsidize industries hastening the climate crisis.

As New York’s only statewide nonprofit news publication, our journalism exists to help you make sense of these contradictions. Our work scrutinizes how power works in the state, unpacks who’s really calling the shots, and reveals how obscure decisions shape ordinary New Yorkers’ lives.

In the last two decades, the number of local news outlets in New York has been nearly slashed in half, allowing elected officials and powerful individuals to increasingly operate in the dark — with the average New Yorker none the wiser.

We’re on a mission to change that. Our work has already shown what can happen when those with power know that someone is watching, with stories that have prompted policy changes and spurred legislation. We have ambitious plans for the rest of the year and beyond, including tackling new beats and more hard-hitting stories — but we need your help to make them a reality.

If you’re able, please consider supporting our journalism with a one-time gift or a monthly gift. We can't do this work without you.

Thank you,

Akash Mehta
Editor-in-Chief