Paramount* Newsroom

*Viacom until Dec 2019, then ViacomCBS until Feb 2022

Creating content to provide value to the audiences that mattered most.

Viacom was at an inflection point.

Around 2017, after decades of operating as a holding company for a portfolio of iconic brands — MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central — Viacom began marketing itself as an entertainment company in its own right. Its marketing and communications infrastructure and strategy was in the midst of an overhaul, and I saw an opportunity for an editorial operation with a point of view.

I pitched transforming the corporate blog, which read like a consumer entertainment feed, into a full editorial operation: a newsroom with a defined audience, a clear editorial mandate, and the infrastructure to produce work to a consistent standard. It required building the capability from scratch. Hiring an editorial and content management team; replatforming and redesigning the entire site; and establishing the editorial standards, governance processes, and stakeholder relationships that made a functioning newsroom possible within a large, complex organization.

The editorial strategy was straightforward in theory and harder in practice: every story had to earn its place by serving a specific audience — advertisers, investors, distributors, or press — and by advancing a strategic narrative. We covered the business of entertainment: streaming strategy, franchise economics, the case for advertising on Viacom's platforms, and the executives building the company's future.

SeanMcManus_Final-3313.jpg

The editorial strategy was straightforward in theory and harder in practice: every story had to earn its place by serving a specific audience.

The newsroom was the beginning.

Once the newsroom was established, I pitched the integration with social: a single content team creating efficiencies across platforms, with the newsroom as the editorial engine and social as the distribution layer.

That model became the foundation of Viacom’s content operation through two major rebrands, first to ViacomCBS and then to Paramount. The capability scaled from a small editorial team into a full content infrastructure that drove measurable audience and engagement growth across every owned channel.

Impact

Established Viacom's corporate editorial operation from zero — team, platform, standards, and strategy.

Published 200+ original stories, averaging 50K monthly pageviews.

Expanded to include corporate social and internal marketing, creating the integrated content model that defined the operation for the next five years.

Awards

Digiday, Best Branded Content Site (B2B)

2019

Content Marketing Institute, Best New Digital Publication

2019

Explore the archive

A few of the best hits, in no particular order.