Media Insider: Twitter Execs Leaving, Pinterest Ventures into Video Advertising, Hard News Thrives on Facebook

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s round up of journalism, blogging and freelancing stories from the week.

Photo by Steve Rhodes used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Twitter’s Exodus: Four Top Execs Leaving (CNN)

Twitter is going through some big changes. CNN reports, on top of a plummeting share price and struggles to attract new users, that four Twitter executives are departing: Product chief Kevin Weil, head of engineering Alex Roetter, global media VP Katie Jacobs Stanton, and human resources VP Skip Schipper. A source familiar with the goings-on told CNNMoney that Roetter, Stanton, and Weil made the decisions at separate times within the last few weeks.

Pinterest is About to Get Into Video Advertising (Digiday)

Digiday reports Pinterest is bringing true video ads to its platform, following rival social media sites into this lucrative part of the digital ad industry. According to Digiday, Facebook and Twitter built autoplay video ads that start on mute. Advertisers said Pinterest would build an ad that is native to its platform, so brands could promote video pins that fit the experience.

Storytelling on Snapchat (NPR’s Social Media Desk)

Snapchat has evolved. What once was a simple communication tool, today is medium for public and visual storytelling. Then Snapchat added Discover a year ago, providing a distribution platform for editorial content. NPR says it has yet to play with Discover; it’s still using Stories to reach a Snapchat audience. However, NPR says Discover is the most unexpected thing to come out of Snapchat thus far, making the social media platform “now a player in the news space.”

Why Hard News is Thriving on Facebook (The Content Strategist)

If you want people to share your content on Facebook right now, make listicles about politics, gun control, and the environment, says The Content Strategist. That’s one key takeaway from a recent report on Facebook engagement. Most people might expect animal videos to rule their news feeds, but many of December’s most popular Facebook stories involved hard issues, including global (climate change, refugees) and national (America’s gun epidemic, Flint’s water crisis) stories.

NBC Replaced by CNN for GOP’s Super Tuesday Debate (CNN)

The Republican National Committee has decided to partner with CNN for February’s Super Tuesday debate. The decision comes a few months after the RNC suspended its partnership with NBC News because of CNBC’s handling of the third GOP debate in October. CNN reports the Republicans said that debate “devolved into a series of ‘gotcha’ questions.” CNN will broadcast the debate on Feb. 25 in Houston.

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Christine Cube is an audience relations manager with PR Newswire and freelance writer. Follow @cpcube or check out her latest on Beyond Bylines on PR Newswire for Journalists.