Campbell Brown, who ran Facebook News, leaves Meta
Mrs. Brown's departure signals how Meta's news priorities and its relationships with media companies have changed.
When Facebook came under fire in 2017 for disseminating false and misleading information, the social network transformed itself into Campbell Brown, a veteran journalist, to improve its relations with the media.
Six years later Later, Ms. Brown leaves the company, now known as Meta, as top executives care less about what the media thinks.
Mrs. Brown, 54, a former television anchor and education advocate who for years was Meta's most prominent representative to the media industry, said in an internal statement Tuesday that she would resign this year to pursue other opportunities. She will remain an advisor to the company and her team will be integrated into other teams focused on developing media and sports partnerships.
A Meta spokesperson said declined to comment. Axios previously reported Ms. Brown's departure.
Her departure will leave Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – without one of its most high-profile representatives in news and sports. and entertainment at a critical time. The first acts of the 2024 US presidential election are underway, and Meta's role as a provider of voter information is sure to come under scrutiny.
In hiring Ms. Brown, Facebook asked it to create partnership programs with news organizations that used the platform. A former prime-time anchor on CNN, Ms. Brown built relationships with news executives who saw Facebook both as a rival for digital advertising dollars and as an important — but fickle — source of traffic for their websites and applications.
When it joined Facebook, the company had already begun courting the news industry with products aimed at encouraging publications to publish their content on its platforms and eliminate misinformation. Early efforts included Instant Articles, a program that allowed people to view stories within the Facebook app, and a third-party fact-checking program.
Mrs. Brown's hiring seemed to indicate that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg placed a high value on high-quality news and information. She led the development and launch of Facebook News, a tab focused on news and lifestyle coverage, and Bulletin, a newsletter platform for renowned writers including memoirist Mitch Albom, l magazine writer and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai. p>
But as Facebook began to downplay the news, Ms. Brown's role changed. Its mandate expanded to include partnerships in sports media and entertainment, while the products it launched fell by the wayside. Last year, Facebook announced it was shutting down Bulletin and stopping paying publishers for content appearing in its News tab.
Publishers have openly complained that Facebook was no longer sending them the traffic it once did. Meta executives acknowledged that they have moved away from placing news links in Facebook's main feed in favor of personal posts and interactions between friends, family and pages people follow on the app.
Mrs. Brown's departure signals how Meta's news priorities and its relationships with media companies have changed.
When Facebook came under fire in 2017 for disseminating false and misleading information, the social network transformed itself into Campbell Brown, a veteran journalist, to improve its relations with the media.
Six years later Later, Ms. Brown leaves the company, now known as Meta, as top executives care less about what the media thinks.
Mrs. Brown, 54, a former television anchor and education advocate who for years was Meta's most prominent representative to the media industry, said in an internal statement Tuesday that she would resign this year to pursue other opportunities. She will remain an advisor to the company and her team will be integrated into other teams focused on developing media and sports partnerships.
A Meta spokesperson said declined to comment. Axios previously reported Ms. Brown's departure.
Her departure will leave Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – without one of its most high-profile representatives in news and sports. and entertainment at a critical time. The first acts of the 2024 US presidential election are underway, and Meta's role as a provider of voter information is sure to come under scrutiny.
In hiring Ms. Brown, Facebook asked it to create partnership programs with news organizations that used the platform. A former prime-time anchor on CNN, Ms. Brown built relationships with news executives who saw Facebook both as a rival for digital advertising dollars and as an important — but fickle — source of traffic for their websites and applications.
When it joined Facebook, the company had already begun courting the news industry with products aimed at encouraging publications to publish their content on its platforms and eliminate misinformation. Early efforts included Instant Articles, a program that allowed people to view stories within the Facebook app, and a third-party fact-checking program.
Mrs. Brown's hiring seemed to indicate that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg placed a high value on high-quality news and information. She led the development and launch of Facebook News, a tab focused on news and lifestyle coverage, and Bulletin, a newsletter platform for renowned writers including memoirist Mitch Albom, l magazine writer and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai. p>
But as Facebook began to downplay the news, Ms. Brown's role changed. Its mandate expanded to include partnerships in sports media and entertainment, while the products it launched fell by the wayside. Last year, Facebook announced it was shutting down Bulletin and stopping paying publishers for content appearing in its News tab.
Publishers have openly complained that Facebook was no longer sending them the traffic it once did. Meta executives acknowledged that they have moved away from placing news links in Facebook's main feed in favor of personal posts and interactions between friends, family and pages people follow on the app.
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