Former Rolling Stone Editor Eric Bates Joins Omidyar-Greenwald Venture

Eric Bates, the former executive editor of Rolling Stone, is joining the new media organization being launched by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and journalist Glenn Greenwald.

According to a post from Omidyar about NewCo -- what the project is currently being called -- Bates "will be instrumental in helping us define our editorial strategy for a general-interest audience as well as the editing infrastructure we will need to support our independent journalists.

Bates worked at Rolling Stone for nearly a decade, editing top stories on politics and national security. He was the editor of "The Runaway General," the award-winning 2010 feature on Gen. Stanley McChrystal by the late Michael Hastings. Bates also participated in four interviews with President Obama while at the magazine. Rolling Stone laid off a couple high-ranking staffers earlier this year, including Bates.

Previously, Bates worked as investigative editor at Mother Jones and was editor-in-chief of Southern Exposure. This year, he became a scholar at NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge and has reportedly been in the running for the top editor job at the Columbia Journalism Review.

When news broke last month that Omidyar was working on a new venture with journalists Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, little had yet been determined about the media outlet's structure. Omidyar told HuffPost that the media outlet will hire experienced editors, along with high-profile writers dedicated to their specific beats.

A couple weeks ago, two more journalists -- Dan Froomkin and Liliana Segura -- came aboard. But Bates will be the first editor to join the venture, which helps add more structure to the growing newsroom.