#ThankYouAnthony
(A thank you note to Anthony Quintano)
I guess it’s fitting that the first time I met Anthony was through a DM on Twitter.
In 2010, I had somewhat naively accepted the job of Director of Social Media at NBC News and was looking to hire the first member of our new team. I remember asking: Should we hire someone who is technical? Should we hire a journalist? Should we hire a marketer?
Anthony had worked as a graphic playback operator at CNBC. In his free time, he was a DSLR geek who was also playing around with emerging social platforms. While he didn't have a clear niche, he had a clear passion and I knew almost immediately that he was what we needed.
The early days of doing “social media” at a news organization were very hard. The professional had become the personal in a very public way. And being at the intersection of editorial, marketing, PR, and digital product is an extremely awkward place. Internally, it’s not uncommon to hear a colleague say, “We need to do more” and “We need to do less” in the same breath. Externally, there are haters who take cheap shots at anyone associated with a legacy brand.
Anthony was relentless in his effort to drive change. He pushed initiatives like plugging social curation tools in to our control rooms, secured our accounts under constant threat and coached countless employees on how to use different platforms to meet business goals.
(I think almost everyone in the building has a story about Anthony. And if they don’t know him in person, they definitely know his pictures.)
The biggest challenge to news orgs is not technology or evolving business models; it’s culture. Many of the early lessons that Anthony learned have been institutionalized in groups across the company in a way that will scale forever. I’m excited to keep growing and maturing how we reach users across screens, but I’ll always be grateful for how Anthony made a lasting impact.
He is headed to Verizon and we all wish him the best of luck.
Thanks for all, AQ.
