The Shorenstein Center welcomes veteran news technology, business, and strategy executive Ben Monnie as a 2024-25 Joan Shorenstein fellow.
Monnie recently joined CNN as Senior Vice President of Strategy & Business Operations, where he is leading efforts to expand and grow that organization’s digital consumer business. Prior to joining CNN, Monnie was a director at Google where he co-founded the Google News Initiative and directed many of the company’s strategy and partnership efforts with the broader news industry.
Prior to joining Google in 2016, Monnie spent a decade at The New York Times in senior strategy and business development roles. During this time, he was part of the founding team of NYTimes.com’s digital subscriptions business and helped lay the foundation for digital product extensions including Gaming and NYT Cooking.
A graduate of Williams College in Massachusetts, Monnie received a Master’s in Journalism from Columbia University and an MBA in Media Management from Columbia Business School.
During his fellowship, Monnie is researching and developing a framework for measuring the health of information ecosystems at the local level. Once developed, this framework will be used to evaluate the supply, distribution and consumption of local news and information, and identify the most impactful potential interventions for problems that local information ecosystems face.
Monnie will also be engaging with the Harvard Kennedy School community, including students, and is available for media requests on topics including the news business, local news ecosystems and digital subscriptions.
