TVNewser's Brian Stelter is Media Web's Online Journalist of the Year - MarketWatch

This guy earns every accolade he gets. His success is simply an amazing story, and his blog is at the top of my "must-read" list, and has been for several years.

Link: TVNewser's Brian Stelter in the Online Journalist of the Year - MarketWatch.

JON FRIEDMAN'S MEDIA WEB

TVNewser's Stelter is Online Journalist of the Year

Commentary: He's THE TV news authority - at, yes, the ripe old age of 21

By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch

Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Dec 15, 2006

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- 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.com 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.

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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.com 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," Dorian Benkoil, mediabistro.com's editorial director, noted.

 

"He gets scoops that most beat reporters don't," said Laurel Touby, the CEO of mediabistro.com, the Internet empire that acquired TVNewser two years ago.

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