Glenn Greenwald Leaving The Guardian

Glenn Greenwald is leaving the Guardian, the newspaper from which he launched his reports of NSA spying, via Edward Snowden leaks. In a statement, Greenwald announced:

My partnership with the Guardian has been extremely fruitful and fulfilling: I have high regard for the editors and journalists with whom I worked and am incredibly proud of what we achieved.

The decision to leave was not an easy one, but I was presented with a once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline.

Because this news leaked before we were prepared to announce it, I’m not yet able to provide any details of this momentous new venture, but it will be unveiled very shortly.

According to Politico, a “philanthropist” will fund the venture.

Buzzfeed reports:

Greenwald will continue to live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he said, and would bring some staff to Rio, but the new organization’s main hubs will be New York City; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco, he said.

The venture, which he said had “hired a fair number of people already,” will be “a general media outlet and news site — it’s going to have sports and entertainment and features. I’m working on the whole thing but the political journalism unit is my focus.”

Greenwald said he looked forward to creating a new organization with “no preexisting institutional strictures on what you can do.”

And he said his move is driven solely by the opportunity presented.

“When people hear what it is, there is almost no journalist who would say no to it,” he said.

UPDATE

Wired reports:

 New details emerged Tuesday night about Glenn Greenwald's new, as-yet unnamed website, including information about its funder and its potential hires.

The site's mystery backer was revealed by the Washington Post as Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of eBay. The Post also reports that Greenwald has hired or is attempting to hire Laura Poitras, the filmmaker who collaborated with Greenwald on some of his early Edward Snowden scoops, as well as the Washington Post's Barton Gellman and The Nation's Jeremy Scahill.