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MEDIA WATCH:TVNewser's Stelter Is Online Journalist Of Yr

15 December 2006

Dow Jones News Service

By Jon Friedman

A Dow Jones Column

Brian Stelter, the founder and leader of TVNewser.com, is a star in the blogosphere.

In the television news industry, Stelter is often a first read for people who want to know what and how their colleagues and competitors are doing at that minute. Because TVNewser has had so much impact, Stelter is Media Web's Online Journalist of the Year.

That's only part of his saga. He is also one of the most improbable success stories around today. He is a solid professional at a point when most of his peers are learning the craft by writing for their campus publications. If his counterparts were really lucky, they'd be freelancing as university correspondents for the local big-city dailies.

You see, the most remarkable aspect of Stelter's success is that he is only 21 years old. Stelter attends Towson University in Maryland (where he has edited the school paper, to boot).

Stelter is the rarest kind of media blogger. He is respected for his knowledge of the industry and the serious subjects that he writes about. Stelter provides useful information to an adult audience. Plenty of other bloggers get their kicks by cranking out mean-spirited gossip.

For instance, he published one of his best nuggets Aug. 29. It was only a week before Katie Couric of "CBS Evening News" was set to begin her much-debated reign as the first solo woman anchor on the network news. Stelter's blog pointed out her "extreme makeover," how CBS Corp. (CBS) overzealously distributed a tampered photo showing a new, much slimmer Couric.

Stelter's item was significant because it underscored the lengths that CBS would apparently go to in order to make Couric look as appealing as possible. CBS, which lives to report on acts of deception by the government and industry leaders (as everyone else in the media does), had been caught bending the rules.

Loyal Following

Stelter founded the blog in January 2004, originally using the name CableNewser. While he is half the age of many of his sources and readers, he has steadily built a loyal following of some of the biggest names in the TV biz.

TVNewser has about 250,000 unique visitors and 900,000 page views a month, and it receives some 200 emails a day from anonymous tipsters and people who like to scream and yell their opinions.

Fans appreciate that Stelter's blog gets right to the point and presents crisp headlines, always concentrating on providing information, not mindless quips.

"You'd think he was doing this for 10 or 20 years," noted Dorian Benkoil, editorial director at mediabistro.com Inc., the Internet empire that acquired TVNewser two years ago.

"He gets scoops that most beat reporters don't," said Laurel Touby, the chief executive of mediabistro.

Ambition

It'll be interesting to see how much ambition Stelter has for his blog.

Perhaps he will begin phasing in commentaries. He has amassed so much institutional knowledge of the industry that readers would be curious to know what his point of view is on big issues.

For now, he has a far more modest and sensible goal in his sights. He's looking forward to graduating from college. Stelter told me this week that he had just taken his broadcast journalism exam Tuesday and was waiting to find out how he did.

He had gotten a B in a radio newscast assignment and an A on a TV newscast project. "So that's a good sign about my career choices," he wrote to me in an email.

Is he kidding? His career prospects could be unlimited.

Hey, I'm surprised Towson hasn't already named him head of the journalism department.

(Jon Friedman is media editor for MarketWatch in New York.)