CNN Hires New President for Its U.S. News Group

[Tab]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - CNN News Group on Monday said it has tapped an online media CEO as its new president overseeing U.S. news, just a little over a year after it hired a former local TV newsman to run its domestic operations.

Jonathan Klein, founder and chief executive officer of The FeedRoom Inc., a high-speed Internet news network and video streamer, will assume the role of head of U.S. news operations, answering to CNN President Jim Walton.
...
"Six years steeped in the digital information industry have helped me understand today's news consumers in ways never before available to media executives," Klein said in a statement.

Klein replaces Princell Hair, who was appointed to oversee the U.S. news group in September 2003. Industry analysts questioned whether Hair, who ran Viacom Inc.'s television stations and was a former TV news director in Los Angeles and Baltimore, was the best candidate to run one of the world's most prestigious news networks.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=6887435&src=rss/Entertainment

[Bleacher Creature]

1. You forgot the line in the article that reads . . .

"This appointment is subject to approval by Karl Rove."

[Tab]

2. He doesn't think much of bloggers, supposedly

From: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/fund091304.asp
A watershed media moment occurred Friday on Fox News Channel, when Jonathan Klein, a former executive vice president of CBS News who oversaw "60 Minutes," debated Stephen Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard, on the documents CBS used to raise questions about George W. Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service.

Mr. Klein dismissed the bloggers who are raising questions about the authenticity of the memos: "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."

He will regret that snide disparagement of the bloggers, many of whom are skilled lawyers or have backgrounds in military intelligence or typeface design. A growing number of design and document experts say they are certain or almost certain the memos on which CBS relied are forgeries.

Mr. Klein didn't directly address the mounting objections to CBS's story. He fell back on what high school debaters call the appeal to authority, implying that the reputation of "60 Minutes" should be enough to dissolve doubts without the network sharing its methods with other journalists and experts.

[autorank]

4. Had me worried for a minute.

I thought CNN had made a smart move. This guy just went from CBS to some startup and then back to CNN. Revolving door. If he dismisses bloggers and the internet culture, then he will realize my fondest dream, to see CNN reduced to even fewer viewers than it has now.

Silly me! I was thinking CNN might try a Hail Mary and bring in a tough, investigative news type to shape that place up. Haha.

[papau]

7. Turns out he was correct about the right wing "bloggers" - The CBS

story was never shown to be a fraud- or to use fraudulent documents.

And the "done with MS WORD" line was shown to be incorrect.

The bloggers did get CBS to go back to Bill Burkett and ask if he would reveal himself as the source - but old Bill was scared and rather than saying he retrieved the memos from the trash that the Bush clean up my records crew had thrown them in, he stated a story of receiving the Docs as 12th generation photo-copies from an unknown person. So CBS had to say the original source could not be verified.

But we all now know that proportional typing began in 1941 - and not with MS Word, and that the microscopes in labs that eventually verified print impression differences provide better evidence than blogger types printing off a MSword copy and using photoshop to compare.

An appeal to authority is a rather rough way to explain Klein's comments - perhaps better would be to say he spoke the truth.

[Downtown Hound]

3. Not doing too good in the ratings

are you CNN? Well, if you'll stop being government whores, I'll be willing to watch you again.

[ooglymoogly]

9. i will never watch cnn again as long as colonel klink (wolf blitzer )

and his merry band of nazis are spewing garbage at cnn.

[peacetalksforall]

17. Wolf, plus Candy, plus Bill S, plus the merry morning jesters, Carl, and

many more. I only like Amanapour.

[makhno]

5. "news consumers"?

That says it all.

[Voltaire99]

6. A network that likes to stand downwind from Power's arse

It matters little what new figurehead is installed. CNN is no more useful to a thinking person than Fox.

[SoCalDem]

8. Princell Hair????

What a name :)

carry on... now I must go read the article

[KoKo]

16. I know, hysterical...but don't you remember SoCal when we DU'ers were

all over this guy. Turns out one of our DU'ers knew the station he used to manage and said he was the type who loved Jerry Springer type programing and had been fired. A bunch of us looked him up and sure enough the guy was a jerk. We were moaning that CNN would go downhill even worse brining Mr. Hair (:D) onboard...and sure enough shortly after he came on board...things got worse to the "cesspool" the place is now.

When he was hired it was said that he would bring "entertainment to the forefront at CNN ...or some such bullshit!

I don't know if the new guy will be better, but I doubt he could be WORSE than Princell....sheesh! He hasn't been there but a couple of years I think...how to destroy a cable that was already in decline...

The whole thing is in DU Archives somewhere. I'm glad the jerk is gone, though.

[Edgewater_Joe]

10. PAGING TED TURNER (or George Soros or Teresa Heinz)!

Please buy this sad-sack excuse for your legacy and whip it back into shape!

[Monte Carlo]

11. Why am I not excited?

I don't know anything about this guy, but I do know something about CNN, and I'd be suprised if this guy brings around something that will make me want to watch.

[loudsue]

12. "..........answering to CNN President Jim Walton. "

A fish stinks from the head > down. Nobody who "answers to" Jim Walton is going to be a REAL NEWS person.

:kick::kick:

[colonel odis]

13. i thought heidi fleiss would get the job.

[Laelth]

14. He dismissed the Nazi, lie-spewing, freeper bloggers!

Good for him! The biggest absurdity of the whole memo credibility story is that nobody questioned the actual content of the memo. Bush was a slacker and he didn't serve, but who cared? All that became important was whether CBS offered a copy or an original document for public scrutiny. I'm glad Klein dismissed the freepers' pathetic arguments (the ones debunked in an above post), and Klien's appointment gives me hope that CNN may have seen the error of its ways in pandering to the BushCo Empire for four years.

Here's hoping, anyway!

-Laelth

[donhakman]

15. why bother, just put FOX in charge

CNN and FOX share the same video and edited news copy already

[AgadorSparticus]

18. i've boycotted them for some time now and they remind me i'm not

missing much. cnn is a lost cause. guess i won't be coming back to it anytime soon.

[Pithy Cherub]

19. Hair replacement for cnn...

rofl!
So Klien is the 'new' comb over! No news here, move along...:evilgrin:

[President Jesus]

20. campaign donation record

http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?zip=10019&st=NY&last=Klein&first=Jonathan

Paxon a Dem or puke?

[JohnnyCougar]

21. he's a puke

http://www.leadingauthorities.com/12855/Bill_Paxon.htm

Apparently, he was chairman of the NRCC.

Fuck! :puke: :puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke: