Brian Stelter is set to make a comeback at CNN, resuming his role with the Reliable Sources newsletter. An email to subscribers announced that Stelter will take over the publication starting September 9, just one day before the highly anticipated presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and President Donald Trump.
“This is not going to be a ‘Back to the Future’ remake,” Stelter wrote to readers. “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.”
In addition to leading the newsletter, Stelter will serve as a chief media analyst for CNN. As he explained to Variety, this new role “means I’ll be appearing on air, developing digital content, and helming this newsletter. It will be different, because I am different.”
Reflecting on his departure from CNN, Stelter shared, “I always scoffed at people who said ‘getting fired was the best thing that’s ever happened to me’ — until, well, it happened to me.”
Stelter originally founded the Reliable Sources newsletter in 2015, but his television program was canceled in 2022, leading to his exit from the network. Oliver Darcy took over the newsletter after Stelter’s departure but left in August to start his own newsletter, Status. Stelter’s exit came during the tenure of Chris Licht, who succeeded Jeff Zucker as CNN’s CEO. Licht was later replaced by Mark Thompson, former executive of The New York Times and the BBC.