Twitter News Head Vivian Schiller Out in Media Unit Consolidation

Vivian Schiller, the high-profile NBC and NPR exec whom Twitter hired to run its news unit, is leaving the company as part of a consolidation.

Adam Sharp will now be in charge of both news and government at the social messaging company, as part of a larger consolidation across the media division by its new head Katie Jacobs Stanton. Sharp previously ran the government unit.

Schiller tweeted her departure, of course.

https://twitter.com/vivian/status/519994546370117632

https://twitter.com/vivian/status/519994570718081024

https://twitter.com/vivian/status/519994685935607808

It’s not clear why Schiller was moved out, but she has only been at the company for one year (almost to the day), having been brought in to goose media relationships.

But, in that time, there have been a lot of changes at the company and Twitter has been a bit of a management musical chairs of late. That’s included the recent departure of its COO Ali Rowghani and its media head Chloe Sladden, whom Stanton replaced. The San Francisco-based company also hired well-known investment banker Anthony Noto as its CFO.

Here is Stanton’s memo on the changes, which Re/code obtained:

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

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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