Clinton daughter Chelsea takes up on-air job with NBC television
Chelsea Clinton to become a full-time special correspondent for NBC News, the American network announced yesterday.
Photo: Bloomberg
The daughter of President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will start work right away on stories that NBC will feature in its “Making a Difference” series on its main newscast each night.
Steve Capus, president of NBC News, said an intermediary contacted him in July with word that Chelsea "was kicking around what she wanted to do next,” the New York Times reported.
Mr. Capus said he met Chelsea and they had a long conversation. “I asked her: ‘What are you interested in doing?’
"She said during her mother’s campaign for president in 2008, she had been moved by stories of people making personal contributions.
That was the kind of thing she would be interested in doing.
"We knew she wasn’t going to do the lead story. "But having somebody who was going to do really captivating feature assignments for the ‘Making a Difference’ franchise really kind of synced up,” Mr. Capus said.
The ‘Making a Difference’ reports are about people making volunteer commitments to improve the lives of others.
Chelsea, who is 31, married investment banker Marc Mezvinsky last year. She said in a statement: “I hope telling stories through ‘Making a Difference’ will help me to live my grandmother’s adage of ‘Life is not about what happens to you, but about what you do with what happens to you.’ ”
One person close to Chelsea told the Times that she had been "quietly raising her profile for some time". She spoke at more than 400 town halls 2008 supporting her mother’s candidacy.
Ms. Clinton will continue her work with her father's Clinton Foundation and her studies at Oxford along with the new job at NBC. She will donate most of the money from NBC to the Clinton Foundation and the George Washington University Hospital in the name of her grandmother, who died this month.
Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of President George W. Bush, already works as a correspondent for NBC’s “Today” show. Meghan McCain, daughter of John McCain, contributes to MSNBC.
Asked if this might this be the start of a full-time TV career for Chelsea, Mr. Capus said, “We both want to see how this goes. It will be full time for the near-term future. But I hope it’s the beginning of a nice, long-term relationship.”