A senior editor of left-wing political website Evolve Politics has announced he is leaving the website after two years to work in PR.
Matt Turner helped set up the politics website while studying at Cardiff University, where he completed a masters degree in political communication.
Turner will be moving away from the world of journalism and starting a job in communications in a couple of months.
Turner told Press Gazette: “I’m looking forward to making my political points and push forward my ideas without being visible and accessible all the time like a lot of journalists and political commentators have to be.
“I’m looking forward to working behind the scenes for a little while.”
He added: “I will still maybe do some columns and opinion pieces now and again, but I’ll be moving away from news journalism.”
Turner has previously written for the Times, the Independent and RT UK [formerly Russia Today].
Turner said Evolve Politics was set up in 2016 as a response to political coverage in the mainstream media. It joined press regulator Impress in November last year.
Commenting on the success of the site, Turner said: “It’s been beyond our wildest expectations.
“First and foremost two years ago we were just working in our bedrooms trying to hold the government to account and within two years we’ve entered the parliamentary lobby and have our own pass.”
Turner said he was also proud of Evolve Politics’ coverage of the 2017 General Election.
“Our story on the scrapping of the ivory sales ban was one of the most shared if not the most shared stories over the 2017 general election,” he said.
“It received one-and-a-half million hits in the month prior and a reach of 50m on Facebook, which is absolutely huge for a part-time setup where a lot of our writers do this in their spare time.”
He added: “For us to come together and achieve that in such a short space of time is fantastic. I think that bears really well for what Evolve Politics is going to do in the future.
“There’s a great team there that are really committed so they will carry on reporting and in my opinion just keep on growing.”
The news site has 21,500 Twitter followers and over 135,000 followers on Facebook.
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