Who will be the new host of NBC’s “Meet the Press”?

By Matea Gold
LATimes.com
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Reporting from New York — NBC executives are closing in on a decision about who will take over “Meet the Press,” its venerable Sunday morning political talk show, with the announcement coming possibly on Dec. 7.

According to network sources, that may be Tom Brokaw’s last day on the air as interim moderator of the program, a post he assumed after the sudden death of longtime host Tim Russert in June.

People close to the process said that they did not yet know who would be ultimately named to the job, arguably Washington’s most powerful journalistic perch. The deliberations have been closely guarded by NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker and NBC News President Steve Capus, who have not yet made a decision, said spokeswoman Allison Gollust.

Barring a last-minute surprise, network insiders and television news observers expect the new moderator — or moderators — will be drawn from a short list of candidates that include NBC chief White House correspondent David Gregory, PBS anchor Gwen Ifill, NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell and NBC political director Chuck Todd. Dark horses include CBS anchor Katie Couric, whose name was floated in internal discussions, according to two sources, but is apparently not interested…

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The Show Must Go On! Draft Gwen Ifill for new host of Meet the Press

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Biography from PBS.org:

Gwen Ifill is moderator and managing editor of “Washington Week” and senior correspondent for “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” She is also frequently asked to moderate debates in national elections, most recently the Vice Presidential debate during the 2004 election.

Ifill joined both “Washington Week” and the NewsHour in 1999, interviewing newsmakers and reporting on issues ranging from foreign affairs to politics.

Before coming to PBS, she spent five years at NBC News as chief congressional and political correspondent, and still appears as an occasional roundtable panelist on “Meet The Press.”

Ifill joined NBC News from The New York Times where she covered the White House and politics. She also covered national and local affairs for The Washington Post, Baltimore Evening Sun, and Boston Herald American.

“I always knew I wanted to be a journalist, and my first love was newspapers,” Ifill said. “But public broadcasting provides the best of both worlds – combining the depth of newspapering with the immediate impact of broadcast television.”

She has received more than a dozen honorary doctorates, and is the recipient of several broadcasting excellence awards, including honors from the National Press Foundation, Ebony Magazine, the Radio Television News Directors Association, and American Women in Radio and Television.

A native of New York City and a graduate of Simmons College in Boston, Ifill serves on the board of the Harvard University Institute of Politics, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Newseum and the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.