Brian Stelter has returned to CNN, where he is chief media analyst and lead author of the Reliable Sources newsletter, which he founded in 2015. Stelter joined CNN in late 2013 as senior media correspondent after a 6½-year run as media reporter at The New York Times. He hosted Reliable Sources on Sunday mornings, the show focusing on how the media covers the major stories, and departed CNN after the program was canceled in 2022.
Oliver Darcy was the lead author on the Reliable Sources newsletter and left CNN in August.
Stelter had launched TVNewser in 2004 as a student at Towson University. He has been a Walter Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University since CNN let him go.
Stelter said the Reliable Sources newsletter relaunches Monday, September 9.
“This is not going to be a Back to the Future remake,” he said in the newsletter September 3 . “The media industry has matured, CNN has evolved, and I have changed a lot since I signed off two years ago. I loved my old life as the anchor of a Sunday-morning show but, to borrow some lingo from my video-game blogger days, I finished that level of the game. Time for new levels, new challenges.”
Stelter said his new role will see him on air, developing digital content and helming the newsletter. “It will be different, because I am different,” he said.
