Free Republic

One of the unfortunate realities of writing about television news is a wholesale dependence on anonymous sources. In conflict with their stated mission of bringing daylight to opaque American institutions, news networks generally don’t let their folks speak freely about their workplaces. And so we don’t know much about the people who helped Michael Hastings construct a delicious little hit piece on Chelsea Clinton for BuzzFeed. “Network executives” lamented her wan presence in interviews. “One senior staffer” predicted she’d be “terrible” on the small screen. “One NBC news staffer” signaled that “there’s resentment” over Clinton’s hiring and the privileges that...

We’ve entered into a kind of Clinton renaissance: Hillary is now officially Internet famous—LOLZ, bitches, etc—and Bill, universally beloved, is giving the keynote to a gathering of Nobel Peace Laureates next week in Chicago, still hot on the quest for his own big prize. (Carter has one. Gore has one. Obama has one.) Then there’s Chelsea Clinton, the former first daughter, and NBC’s latest high profile hire. With Chelsea, it’s complicated. To get the TV gig, Chelsea’s team played off rival networks, holding a series of meetings in New York last fall with all the major television news outlets, including...