Popular pundit Rachel Maddow will host a new talk show on MSNBC, catapulting the Air America host and progressive favorite into a prime time field largely dominated by male and conservative anchors.
MSNBC is set to officially announce the decision on Wednesday, but the channel's biggest star, Keith Olbermann, broke the news to supporters through a "fully authorized leak" on his diary at DailyKos on Tuesday evening. The jocular host, a longtime Maddow booster, even wrote up a few answers to "key questions" for his blog audience:
No, the format isn't set, though there have been a lot of discussions out there and they have all centered on how to best allow her to both give her laser-quality insights while soliciting the opinions of others.
Ari Melber
Popular pundit Rachel Maddow will host a new talk show on MSNBC, catapulting the Air America host and progressive favorite into a prime time field largely dominated by male and conservative anchors.
MSNBC is set to officially announce the decision on Wednesday, but the channel’s biggest star, Keith Olbermann, broke the news to supporters through a "fully authorized leak" on his diary at DailyKos on Tuesday evening. The jocular host, a longtime Maddow booster, even wrote up a few answers to "key questions" for his blog audience:
No, the format isn’t set, though there have been a lot of discussions out there and they have all centered on how to best allow her to both give her laser-quality insights while soliciting the opinions of others.
Yes, I had something to do with it.
Yes, you had something to do with it.
Yes, I did like the description of her in The Nation: "Everything about her radiates competence and a deft, bright careerism."
The show is set to begin on September 8, batting clean-up for Olbermann.
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.