HITS ENDS THREE MORE PROMISING CAREERS

HITS has announced the promotion of two members of its editorial staff and the addition of a third. Our sympathies go out to their loved ones.

Jamie Mitchell steps into the role of Retail Editor. Mitchell, formerly head of Sales Analysis & Research, previously owned and ran his own record store, served as Store Manager for National Record Mart’s Waves Music and was an Employee Development Manager for Tower Records. He was a club DJ in college, but never gave up on his dream of one day making spreadsheets about Justin Bieber’s track sales. In his prior capacity at HITS, Jamie studied at the feet of founding Retail Editor Mark Pearson, who taught him to root for the Giants and attribute anomalous results to algorithmic phenomena. He enjoys his job at least 73% of the time, especially when he’s stealing movies on Bittorrent.

In what she must experience as a recurring nightmare, Michelle Santosuosso rejoins HITS as Editor. The music-biz veteran most recently served at Primary Wave Music and TV’s Emerald Productions, and as artist coordinator on TBS’ The Good Life. She previously worked at Napster, creating content for the early-adopter sub service Napter-to-Go, and was PD of Hot 92.3 Jamz (KHHT) in L.A. Of course, she also worked at HITS earlier in her career, and still regrets her parting words, “Eat my dust, bitches—I will never be back in this sorry dump.” Since her return, Michelle has educated the whitest editors in the western hemisphere about hip-hop; her presence has actually caused the word “dope” to be used in the office as an adjective as well as a noun.

Samantha Hissong, meanwhile, is promoted to the post of Editor. The self-styled #henchhipster interned at HITS in high school as “underage club crawler,” immediately becoming the least popular girl in her class. She returned as Associate Editor after pursuing Media Studies at Emerson College. Since then she has been HITS’ correspondent at the Grammys and covered unsigned and breaking artists on The B Side in addition to her other editorial duties. At the tender age of 23, Sam is able to show her older colleagues how to work baffling new technology like “apps” and “the coffee maker.” An aficionado of ink, she sports a tattoo on her left arm quoting a heartbreaking Tom Waits lyric, and one on her right explaining how to left-justify a picture in the website interface.

“Who are these people,” asked HITS Editor in Chief Leonard J. Beer as he rummaged through his desk for rolling papers, “and what are they paying me to work here?” Publisher Dennis Lavinthal was on vacation and unavailable for comment.