New York Times’ Marcus Mabry is joining the Twitter team to head Moments

By Lulu Chang Published October 20, 2015

Twitter isn’t wasting much time mourning the dearly departed. Just a week after announcing that it had fired eight percent of its workforce (some of whom found out in less than ideal ways), Twitter is charging full steam ahead and bringing aboard new talent, including New York Times editor at large Marcus Mabry, who will now be heading Twitter Moments.

Moments, a new feature announced in a Twitter blog post two weeks ago, is described as “the best of what’s happening on Twitter in an instant,” and considering Mabry’s background with the Times’ “Watching” section, it seems that the former journalist is a perfect fit for the new team and the new role.

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“So grateful to @nytimes for opportunity to cover the world and work with best reporters in the business!” Mabry tweeted this morning, sharing a screenshot of his departure notice from the Times. “We will miss Marcus’s news judgment and camaraderie — not to mention his boisterous sense of humor,” New York Times Assistant Masthead Editor Clifford Levy wrote in a morning email.

So grateful to @nytimes for opportunity to cover the world and work with best reporters in the business! pic.twitter.com/xFfXGnMLLx

— Marcus Mabry (@marcusmabry) October 20, 2015

Currently, the Moments team is comprised of around a dozen curators who sit in the New York and San Francisco Twitter offices, and given the newness of the platform, there’s still a lot of decisions to be made about the ultimate direction and purpose of the channel. With Mabry’s extensive experience in aggregating engaging and widely appealing content, however, it seems that Moments will soon be on its way.

The New York Times editor is by no means the first big name to join Twitter since the slew of layoffs. Six days ago, Omid Kordestani, Google’s former chief business officer, joined the social media team as the new executive chairman.

And of course, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is also making a number of strategic decisions for his other company, Square, for which he also serves as the chief executive. Yesterday, the multi-tasker tweeted to announce that he’d hired Jackie Reses, formerly of Yahoo’s executive team, to lead Square Capital, Square’s business financing division.

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