Pinterest confirmed that San Francisco Chronicle President Joanne Bradford will step down at the end of the month to join Pinterest as head of partnerships. The news was first reported by the Chronicle.
Bradford "oversaw the Chronicle's digital and marketing efforts," per the Chronicle, but was only at the newspaper for six months following three years as chief revenue and marketing officer at Demand Media. Bradford has also held revenue and marketing positions with Yahoo and Microsoft.
See also: Twitter Hires NBC's Vivian Schiller as Head of News Partnerships
"We're thrilled to confirm that Joanne Bradford is joining Pinterest as head of partnerships, where she will be focused on both commercial and content partnerships globally," a Pinterest spokesperson said in a statement given to Mashable.
Bradford's new responsibilities will include "building both commercial and content partnerships globally," according to a Pinterest spokesperson. The Chronicle reports that she will also serve as a liaison between Pinterest and the Chronicle's parent company, Hearst Corporation, on "developing strategic partnerships between the two companies."
The move by Pinterest is similar to Twitter's hire of NBC's Vivian Schiller to head up its news partnerships push. Many social sites like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest serve as sources of news and content for mainstream journalism publications, requiring an executive with industry connections to bring together the social and journalism sides.
It possible that Bradford's role will be similar to Schiller's at Twitter. Schiller will work with outside news corporations to build integration with the platform and will be responsible for steering the product in a direction that lends to better integration with news publications and networks. Pinterest has already made efforts to build the platform with journalism sites in mind. The company expanded article pins in September to encourage publications and users to share more articles on the site, and just last month Pinterest struck a deal with Getty Images to add more detailed information to Getty photos that appear on the site.
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