Merrill Brown

Merrill Brown, senior strategist of Journalism Online, is the founder and principal of MMB Media LLC, which provides clients with management and strategy consulting, corporate, editorial and program development, business analysis and marketing services. Since the founding of MMB Media, clients have ranged from companies in the news, information and wireless businesses to a large foundation. Mr. Brown serves as Senior Strategist for Journalism Online, LLC, a company seeking to help publishers charge for the online content they produce.

Mr. Brown is also a partner in Propeller LLC, a New York consultancy, and served from 2005 through 2007 as National Editorial Director of News for the 21st Century: Incubators of New Ideas (News 21), part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. Before establishing MMB Media, Mr. Brown served as Senior Vice President, RealNetworks’ RealOne Services (2002–2003) and was responsible for all facets of the RealOne programming business including programming, subscription sales, marketing, advertising sales and technology. Prior to that, Mr. Brown helped launch MSNBC.com serving as the site’s first Editor in Chief, and also served as a Senior Vice President. Before joining MSNBC in 1996, Mr. Brown was a media and communications consultant whose work included strategic development work at Time Inc., NBC, US West and a score of other media ventures. Mr. Brown was one of the initial strategists responsible for creating the Courtroom Television Network (Court TV) and worked on all facets of the network’s operation leading up to its 1991 launch. As senior vice president, corporate and program development, he oversaw program planning, advertising, promotion, marketing, public relations and development of day-to-day management of the cable network through 1994.

From 1985 to 1990, Mr. Brown was editor in chief of Channels magazine, which was named as a National Magazine Award finalist for general excellence during Brown's tenure. Early in his career, Mr. Brown was associated with the Washington Post, the Washington Star, the Winston-Salem Sentinel, and St. Louis Post Dispatch, serving in a variety of editorial capacities.

Mr. Brown also serves on the boards of Smashing Ideas, Inc., the Center for Citizen Media, New West Publishing, the International Women’s Media Foundation, iFocus, the Institute for the Connected Society, Project Agape, and the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. Mr. Brown is a member of the advisory boards of two advertising firms, Media 6 Degrees and TRA Global, where he recently became Advisory Board Chairman. Mr. Brown is an advisor to and has served as Chairman of the Board of NowPublic.com, the leading citizen journalism company in the world. Mr. Brown is also an advisor to Evri.com, a content discovery company funded by Vulcan Capital.