MSNBC isn’t the only network with an under-30 host. CNN has hired 28-year-old New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter to host its Sunday media show Reliable Sources. Stelter has guest-hosted a few times already since longtime host Howard Kurtz left for Fox News.
Earlier this year, Stelter's book Top of the Morning came out, about the network morning shows, including a takedown of the "general meanness" on the set of NBC's Today. Time's James Poniewozik adds he'll be leaving the Times, not working at both media outlets:
Stelter wil leave the Times, where his career had rocketed upward since he was hired there after having founded the TVNewser blog when still just a student [at Towson, just north of Baltimore]. (Stelter, an early and avid user of social media, might help broaden Reliable beyond its old-school media focus.)
It's a loss for the Times (outsiders had anointed Stelter as a future leader of the Times, if not its top editor someday), but it's probably for the best. The leading newspaper is deeply bound up in the issues Reliable Sources covered, and working for both outlets would create immense potential conflicts both ways. Kurtz kept his day job at the Washington Post the entire time he hosted Reliable and never shook the appearance that he was pulling punches on one outlet while covering it for the other.
Earlier: Stelter finds Limbaugh (but not Al Sharpton) an "offensive figure" that could hurt advertisers.
