INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The Atlantic has hired Facebook Alex Hardiman to head up its business and product efforts
She&ll join in the fall from Facebook, where she been serving as the social media giant head of news products.
In her new role, Hardiman
will focus on digital consumer revenue, audience experience and product strategy, leading The Atlantic product, engineering, data and growth
teams.
&I&ve always been a news person,& Hardiman said in a Facebook post
&It my passion during the workday and my guilty pleasure on nights and weekends
It why I spent a decade at The Times before coming to Facebook to help tackle some of the company formidable news challenges, and it why I&m
now joining The Atlantic at a unique moment in its history.&
Hardiman joined Facebook in 2016, just as criticism against the platform for
its role in spreading &fake news& began to spread like wildfire
She was promoted to lead its news efforts on the product side in May 2017
Before that, she spent more than a decade at The New York Times, completing her tenure as vice president of news products.
Alex Hardiman,
former VP of product at The NY Times, will take the lead on Facebook news products
&Her leadership positions at both Facebook and The New
York Times give her an unrivaled perspective on digital media, and her audience-first focus will sharpen the appeal of our work,& The
Atlantic president Bob Cohn said in a statement
&All this will serve us extremely well as we aggressively expand our ambitions for 2019 and beyond.&
At Facebook, Hardiman was involved in
a variety of projects, including removing the trending feature and launching Facebook Watch
Both initiatives were part of a greater effort to remove fake news from the site and provide new avenues for more reliable news from trusted
sources.
&Alex is a true leader who built a fantastic team,& a representative from Facebook told me
&She helped develop a framework and key news products for both people on Facebook and publishers
We wish her nothing but the best at The Atlantic.&
Here Hardiman full statement:
A Personal Update
I have some news to share: after two
deeply gratifying years at Facebook, I&ve decided to leave and join The Atlantic in the fall.
I&ve always been a news person
It my passion during the workday and my guilty pleasure on nights and weekends
It why I spent a decade at The Times before coming to Facebook to help tackle some of the company formidable news challenges, and it why I&m
now joining The Atlantic at a unique moment in its history.
Facebook has given me so many things for which I&m profoundly grateful: wildly
talented colleagues, great relationships with news organizations that are reinventing their future, and deep humility for the difficulty of
solving nuanced problems at Facebook scale
Facebook has a long way to go, but there important progress being made to rebuild trust with consumers and publishers
The people behind the scenes work like crazy to make that happen and they often fly under the radar, but you can read more about some of
them here:https://www.cnet.com/…/the-cure-for-facebooks-fake-news-in…/
I&m proud of the News team mission-driven ethos and I couldn&t be more confident and optimistic about its future.
It therefore required an
extraordinary opportunity to compel me to move on
The Atlantic has always been a part of my life when things got complicated
When I was conflicted about how to pursue professional ambition and motherhood at the same time, I found Anne Marie Slaughter perspective to
be the most refreshing and relatable take on the issue
When I was trying to make sense of President Obama foreign policy, Jeffrey Goldberg reporting brought radical clarity and honesty to my
Since before the Civil War, The Atlantic has consistently defined the most ambitious and contentious ideas of the moment
In today political and social climate, its role has never been more vital.
So when I met with The Atlantic and Emerson Collective teams to
learn about the next phase of investment and growth, I already knew how much of a privilege it would be to join them
In my new role, I&ll be partnering with teams across The Atlantic to create digital products that people love, grow the company consumer
revenue line, and transform The Atlantic from a media-centric organization to a leader in media and product
After having built products with hundreds of news organizations at Facebook from the outside, I&m particularly excited to return to tackle
these opportunities with The Atlantic from within.
Facebook friends: thank you for everything
I&ve learned so much from you and have an unwavering appreciation for all that you do to better serve the people and publishers who use your
products.
Future Atlantic colleagues: I can&t wait to get to work and join you on this important mission
