Marcus Mabry, a six-year veteran of CNN, has been promoted to SVP of digital editorial and programming at the news outlet.
In the role, Mabry will lead CNN’s digital global programming, features and visuals teams, including Opinion, CNN Style and CNN Travel. He will report to CNN’s chief digital officer, a role that is currently being served on an interim basis by Wendy Brundige, formerly SVP of global video, after Andrew Morse exited the company earlier this year following the shutdown of the CNN+ subscription streaming service.
Mabry’s promotion comes amid other high-level exits from CNN Digital, which have followed the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia to form Warner Bros. Discovery. Those include Courtney Coupe, most recently SVP of content strategy and operations for CNN Digital, who recently departed to join LinkedIn, and CNN Digital editor in chief Meredith Artley.
In a memo to staff, Mabry said in a statement, “This is an honor. Not many boys raised by a single mom in Trenton get to occupy these positions of responsibility in American journalism. I could not be more excited to lead these talented teams at such a consequential time for our platforms, our network and our world.”
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Brundige wrote in the memo about Mabry’s new role, “On top of his exceptional work, guidance and editorial excellence over the last six years at CNN, I want to thank him for his leadership this summer and guiding CNN Digital’s editorial teams through a time of change and transition.”
Most recently, Mabry was CNN’s VP of global news programming. He joined CNN in 2016 to lead the mobile programming team, building out the mobile news team with a diverse cast of talent. Prior to CNN, Mabry was the first North American editor of Twitter Moments, the social platform’s news product, and before that held multiple posts at the New York Times, including anchoring the paper’s daily web video show, TimesCast, and anchoring live video coverage of the 2012 Democratic and Republican national conventions. At the Times, Mabry served as international business editor, a national politics editor, editor-at-large and a senior editor at the international edition based in Paris.
Mabry started his career at Newsweek as an intern, going to become a business editor, State Department correspondent, Paris correspondent and Africa bureau chief. Earlier he he had internships at his hometown paper, the Trentonian in Trenton, N.J., and the Boston Globe.
Mabry is the author of two books: the authorized biography “Condoleezza Rice: Naked Ambition” and “White Bucks and Black-Eyed Peas: Coming of Age Black in White America.” He is a former national secretary of the NLGJA, a lifetime member of NABJ and co-founder of NABJ’s LGBTQ+ Task Force. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University and is a graduate of the NAMIC Executive Leadership Program at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.
