Vivian Schiller Steps Down as Twitter’s Head of News as Part of Ongoing Reorganization

Schiller says move is to allow new media chief Katie Stanton to “reorganize as she sees fit”

Vivian Schiller Twitter

Twitter’s News chief Vivian Schiller is leaving the social media company, she tweeted on Wednesday.

Schiller, who has worked at The New York Times, MSN, CNN, NBC News, News Corp and AOL ,was brought in to shore up Twitter’s media division. She ended up in the role for less than a year.

In a series of posts, Schiller tweeted that the move is to allow new media chief Katie Stanton to “reorganize as she sees fit.” The outgoing head of Twitter’s News division then thanked former Twitter COO Ali Rowghani and Twitter’s former head of North American media, Chloe Sladden — both who have left the social media giant in recent months.

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Similarly to Schiller’s exit, another senior exec, Geoff Reiss — who was Twitter’s head of Sports — also recently left with less than a year under his belt.

Another event within the last 12 months was Twitter’s IPO, which launched in November 2013. The initial public offering did not exactly set the stock market on fire.

Also read: Longtime People.com Editor Janice Morris Exiting Publication (Exclusive)

In the interim, Adam Sharp will lead Schiller’s now-former team, assuming the title of global chair of News & Gov, Stanton wrote in an internal memo.

The memo, obtained by Re/code, is posted below. Beneath that, read Schiller’s goodbye tweets.

Hi everyone

As we continue to streamline the global media team and become more operationally efficient, we have decided to merge our news, gov & elections teams in North America. These teams have always worked in close partnership and we believe the new leadership structure will allow for even better synergy and best practice sharing among these important partners. As part of this transition, Vivian Schiller has decided to step down from her role.

I want to thank Vivian for all she has done at Twitter this year. Her knowledge and experience in the field of journalism and her respect among industry peers have been instrumental in to our work and reputation with news organizations.

She oversaw many innovative integrations with such partners at The News York Times, MSN, CNN, NBC News, News Corp, AOL and more. She oversaw the successful evolution of Dataminr to commercial release. She has built strong bridges to key internal allies in BD, Syndication team, Amplify and Snappy to further their goals, and was always happy to pitch in for me when needed as she did with the US sports team. And she has creating a framework for Twitter’s partnership with news organizations that is now used by our partner managers the world over. We wish Vivian much success in the future.

Effectively immediately, Adam Sharp will lead both teams. Adrienne, Janice and Mark will report directly to Adam Sharp. In addition, Adam will assume the responsibility of Global Chair of News & Gov (combining both global vertical calls).

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

Thanks,
Katie

 

 

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