The San Francisco-based giant had been looking for someone who could be its liaison with news gathering operations. Schilller’s solid resume includes stints at The New York Times, NPR, CNN, NBCU, and Discovery, though she resigned from NPR last March after a couple of embarrassing incidents, including the release of a video showing a staffer nicking the GOP and the Tea Party. Website AllThingsD reported earlier this month she was a done deal, but nothing was official until today. She’d been put into her most recent position, at NBCU, by NBC News chief Steve Capus, who has since left; Deborah Turness took over in May.
Those “couple of embarrassing incidents” glossed over by Deadline Hollywood involve Schiller unceremoniously dumping Juan Williams from NPR merely for admitting a moment’s worth of thoughtcrime, and then advising him to arrange for a little Soviet-style political psychiatry afterwards. She was ultimately “ousted” as president and CEO of NPR by its board according to the Daily Caller, after an NPR vice president was caught on camera “calling the tea party ‘racist’ and disclosing that the organization could survive without government funds.”
I’m not sure why a demassified medium such as Twitter needs a “head of news,” but Schiller should have no problem fitting in with the 140-character-a-tweet platform. NBC, particularly under Capus, has certainly developed a knack of editing things down to the bare essentials — and then some:
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