MSNBC Adds Editorial Director Position (Deck Chair Re-Arrangement Alert)

MediaBistro.com ^ | July 31, 2006 | Staff

[abb]

Dan Abrams is adding an editorial director to MSNBC's management team. Davidson Goldin has joined the cable news net from The New York Sun, where he was a columnist and acting city editor.

Goldin will report to Abrams. "Together with Meghan Schaefer in her new role as Senior Executive Producer of Dayside Programming, David will assist Susan Sullivan with the editorial content of our live coverage -- everything from scripts and teases to chyrons and presentation," Abrams said in a memo this afternoon.

Goldin has guested on MSNBC and other nets numerous times. He produced for Fox News before moving to NBC in 1996. In 1995 he was a political reporter for NY1. Click continued for the full memo...

Dan Abrams' memo:

I am pleased to announce an important addition to the MSNBC management team. Today, Davidson Goldin joins us as Editorial Director of MSNBC. Most recently, David was a columnist and acting city editor of The New York Sun. He directed the paper's daily coverage of regional news and managed reporter assignments. David has also written more than 100 stories for The New York Times.

He began his career as a desk assistant for ABC News in 1993 after graduating from Cornell University, where he was editor-in-chief of The Cornell Daily Sun. He went on to produce stories for Fox News in 1995 and early 1996. I met David when he interviewed me for one of the many Dateline pieces he produced while at NBC News from 1996 to 1999.

From 1999 to 2005 he was a political reporter for NY1 and from 2002-2005, was a host of the station's nightly political news and interview show, Inside City Hall. He may also be familiar face to many of you since he has appeared as a guest numerous times on MSNBC in addition to CNN, Fox News Channel and Court TV.

Together with Meghan Schaefer in her new role as Senior Executive Producer of Dayside Programming, David will assist Susan Sullivan with the editorial content of our live coverage -- everything from scripts and teases to chyrons and presentation.

David will report to me. For the next couple of weeks, expect to see him walking around the building and the control room, as he learns more about MSNBC. I know how much he is looking forward to working with all of us.

[abb]

Move that chair over there! No, no - not that one! Watch it!! They're sliding over the rail!

[andyandval]

Deck chair rearrangement alert!

[roses of sharon]

What's there to learn about MSNBC, its known as the "Conspirazoid Network".

[NorCalRepub]

...if they get rid of Olber-eyebrows first....that would improve their network 100% to begin with....better yet, make him apologize to Bill O'Reilly on the air.....not that I love Bill...but Keith is a cluster F**K

[johnny7]

The list just increased to 15º

[Darkwolf377]

You just know that someday Olberman will have a nervous breakdown on the air and start flinging his own filth around the set, flipping over chairs and growling "&**(&%^& O'Reilly!" and yelling at the women in ths tudio. MSNBC will not only keep the cameras going, they'll have NBC run it as Breaking News! MSNBC Showing Something People Actually Tuning In For!

[abb]

LOL! Olberman transmogrifies into Howard Beal. Life imitates art...

[litehaus]

"David has also written more than 100 stories for The New York Times."....................Gee, wonder where he stands on abortion,Bush,etc etc ....../sarc

[NorCalRepub]

...I'm sure Keith does that at his home already.....he is the first UNreality show.......but I can see it now.. LOL sitting around in his own excrement throwing frozen bananas at the TV when Bill is on......poor poor pathetic liberal

[Darkwolf377]

Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

[shouting]'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: KEITH OLBERFOREHEAD[screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

[kjo]

Yeah, exactly. Just what this liberal network needed, another liberal boss to install liberal attitudes where they already exist.

These people really, really don't get it.

[PDR]

You're on television, dummy!

[Darkwolf377]

Whenever I look at Olberman, and that huge forehead of his, I think of that creature, was it in Men in Black? It looks like a human, but you flip up his forehead and there are these two little aliens in chairs inside, controlling him.

That's Olberforehead: He has aliens inside his skull. And they're trying to get out!!!

[Darkwolf377]

LOL!!

Ned Beatty as Dan Abrams

[abb]

Nelson Chaney: All I know is that this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting.
Frank Hackett: We're not a respectable network. We're a whorehouse network, and we have to take whatever we can get.
Nelson Chaney: Well, I don't want any part of it. I don't fancy myself the president of a whorehouse.
Frank Hackett: That's very commendable of you, Nelson. Now sit down. Your indignation is duly noted; you can always resign tomorrow.

[abb]

Howard Beale: I would like at this moment to announce that I will be retiring from this program in two weeks' time because of poor ratings. Since this show is the only thing I had going for me in my life, I've decided to kill myself. I'm going to blow my brains out right on this program a week from today. So tune in next Tuesday. That should give the public relations people a week to promote the show. You ought to get a hell of a rating out of that. 50 share, easy.

[i_dont_chat]

Dan Abrams creating a new position -- that being for the next "fall guy" as their ratings continue to plummet.

He wants to distance himself from any responsibility.

Similar to moving the deck chairs on the Titantic to the highest deck elevation.

Abrams will go down eventually. He delayed it somewhat. He's pulling in the big bucks, don't you know!

[abb]

Howard Beale: Good evening. Today is Wednesday, September the 24th, and this is my last broadcast. Yesterday I announced on this program that I was going to commit public suicide, admittedly an act of madness. Well, I'll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit. Am I still on the air? I really don't know any other way to say it other than I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. And if we can't think up any reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit. We don't know why we're going through all this pointless pain, humiliation, decays, so there better be someone somewhere who does know. That's the God bullshit. And then, there's the noble man bullshit; that man is a noble creature that can order his own world; who needs God? Well, if there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is full of bullshit. I don't have anything going for me. I haven't got any kids. And I was married for forty-three years of shrill, shrieking fraud. So I don't have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see.

[abb]

Hmmmmm. Tom Cruise as Keith Olberman? He's got the crazy down cold?

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

MSNBC's programming is pretty pitiful...through my copious channel surfing over the weekend, I found that all it was showing were programs about serial killers, mass murderers, and supermax prisons, with repeated viewings every six hours or so.