From a Washingtonian story by Jane Recker headlined “Carrie Budoff Brown Is Leaving Politico for Meet the Press”:
Longtime Politico editor Carrie Budoff Brown is leaving Politico to go to NBC. As Senior Vice President of “Meet the Press,” she will “be responsible for MTP’s editorial programming on television, digital and streaming and will work to expand the iconic brand’s reach and impact even further,” NBC News president Noah Oppenheim said in a memo to staff.
Budoff Brown joined Politico in its startup days in 2007, and has been with the publication since. She has served as a staff writer covering the Senate, the 2008 campaign, and the White House, and as a managing editor of Politico Europe in Belgium. She has been editor of Politico since November 2016….Prior to Politico, she was a staff writer at the Hartford Current and Philadelphia Inquirer.
Here is the memo sent to Politico staff about Budoff Brown’s departure from Chairman Robert Allbritton:
Carrie Budoff Brown, an important part of my life and a member of our POLITICO family for nearly 15 years, has let me and Matt Kaminski know that she has decided to accept a leadership position outside our newsroom.
NBC News, where she is headed to a position helping chart the future of the historic “Meet the Press” franchise, can count itself lucky—just as we at POLITICO can count ourselves lucky that we have had this exceptional journalist by our sides for the birth of our publication and critical phases of its growth in the United States and Europe….
One of Carrie’s achievements—made in concert with so many people here—has been to create a much different newsroom than the one she took over upon her return from Brussels in 2016.
At that time, we were coming off a strong run of journalistic successes, but many parts of our newsroom needed focused attention if we were to put this place on a sustainable and long-term growth trajectory. Carrie made special efforts to improve our audience engagement team and drive innovation on our platforms; as we look around us, we see people like Lily Mihalik, Ali Manzano and Paul Volpe, who are in essential jobs that did not exist previously.
She invigorated reporters and forged strong relationships with editors like Luiza Savage, Joe Schatz, Blake Hounshell, Sudeep Reddy, Karey Van Hall, Angela Greiling Keane, Marty Kady, Peter Canellos, Steve Heuser, Brooke Minters, Mike Zapler, Robin Turner, Irene Noguchi, Jess Cuellar and so many others that have driven our journalism forward, particularly as she and Matt Kaminski did the work of reorganizing a modern newsroom.
Above all, Carrie drove our coverage of the Trump era in Washington, an unprecedented period that saw POLITICO produce some of its highest impact journalism at the intersection of politics and policy – with the awards (and Cabinet resignations) to prove it….
In those early days of POLITICO, I was aware of every hire and was often directly involved in recruiting in a way that we are too big to do today. As John Harris reminded me, our promise to the young Philadelphia Inquirer reporter was that she would have more fun, more impact, and reap the benefits of more success if she joined our startup. Just as she delivered on her end of the bargain, we have delivered on ours. We are going to keep delivering now for our collection of newsrooms that includes more than five hundred journalists spanning nine time zones….
There is one more place where I would like to draw on examples I associate with Carrie. For all our recent success, we are emerging from a very difficult and often dark period—certainly for our country, but these outside events naturally affect us as journalists, media professionals, and citizens. There is serious work ahead, but as we emerge from the pandemic it feels reasonable at last to feel lightness. Let’s do that work with a spring in our step, with laughter, with joy in meeting and beating the competition, and with satisfaction in serving our country by serving our audience.
Thank you to Carrie—and thank you to each of her colleagues who joins me in wishing her well.
Speak Your Mind