TV news powerful get inside info from student in dorm room: TVNewser

[DeepModem Mom]

USA Today: Media Mix, by Peter Johnson
Student energizes the news blog biz


(By Kanji Takeno, Towson University)
Brian Stelter, 20, blogs from dorm, from class and while on vacation. He writes about "inside stuff that isn't going to get in a newspaper."


Brian Stelter realized he had come of age in January at an American Society of Newspaper Editors luncheon.

NBC anchor Brian Williams, the speaker, pointed out Stelter to the guests. Williams explained that in this new-media age, Stelter's online TVNewser blog, at Mediabistro.com, was a must-read for anyone in network and cable news.

"I thought it was so strange that a 20-year-old blogger could be pointed out by the anchor of NBC Nightly News for something that he does in his dorm room," says Stelter, a senior journalism student at Towson University in Maryland. He also updates his blog during classes, thanks to the school's wireless Internet, and on vacation, from the beach last week in Ocean City, Md.

Williams, who writes a daily blog at NBC, makes no apologies for praising Stelter, who grew up watching Williams on MSNBC and has dreams of a career in TV news.

TVNewser "is the closest thing to the bible of what's going on in our industry," says Williams, who checks it daily. "But it's a little disconcerting knowing that the main pulse of your industry is being taken by someone who cannot legally take a drink."...

http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/2006-07-09-media-mix_x.htm