Oliver Darcy, the author of CNN’s influential “Reliable Sources” newsletter, has left the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed outlet, leaving the direction of the company’s media-industry franchise in doubt.
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A new newsletter from Darcy, called “Status,” landed in email inboxes Thursday morning.
“Drawing on a deep well of sourcing and industry expertise, ‘Status’ delivers hard-hitting reporting and unflinching analysis on the Fourth Estate, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley,” Darcy wrote in an email delivered via the Beehiv platform. “There will be no sugarcoating, no pulling punches, no sparing sensitive egos — just the unvarnished truth about the companies and individuals who shape our world.” He said the newsletter would be published Sunday through Thursday.
One person familiar with the matter said Darcy was eager to pursue his own path and felt he could turn his reporting and media presence into a scalable business. He won’t be the first journalist associated with a popular TV outlet to try and do so. In recent years, former TV anchors ranging from CNN’s Don Lemon to MSNBC’s Medhi Hasan to Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson have all lit out for digital territory in efforts to create their own business. In some cases, the journalist leaves after a parting of the ways. Darcy, however, appears to have enjoyed a relationship based on mutual respect at CNN.
Both Darcy and CNN confirmed that he had left the network. “Oliver has established himself as a tough but scrupulously fair leading voice in media reporting and commentary – never afraid to call it as he sees it,” said Mark Thompson, CNN’s CEO, in a statement. “He has been a great shepherd of CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter, and we wish him every success in his new entrepreneurial adventure.”
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A CNN spokesperson said the newsletter would go on hiatus for the rest of the summer, returning in the fall with a new lead writer. CNN has a team devoted to media coverage, including reporter Hadas Gold, editor Jon Passantino and writer Liam Reilly.
“Reliable Sources” was once one of CNN’s bedrock programs, a show that ran for 30 years on Sunday mornings and took a critical look at how the media handled issues, usually mostly tied to the Washington news cycle. Bernard Kalb initially anchored the program, then Howard Kurtz. In 2013, CNN hired Brian Stelter, a entrepreneurial media reporter who parlayed a blog he created that examined the TV news industry into a media-beat job at the New York Times, to lead the show. Stelter, during the tenure of Jeff Zucker, launched a newsletter that became a must-read for media cognoscenti.
CNN, however, parted ways with Stelter after cancelling the TV show in 2022 — ostensibly in a bid to tamp down an aggressive demeanor that grew at CNN under Zucker’s aegis that executives at the parnet company perceived as left-leaning. Darcy, who had come aboard to work on the newsletter and media coverage, was assigned to keep the newsletter moving.
Darcy’s last “Reliable Sources” newsletter, published Wednesday evening, made no allusion to his departure. But the lead item of the day was a take on disastrous results at CNN’s corporate parent, Warner Bros. Discovery, which on Wednesday reported a $9.1 billion write-down on the value of its TV networks. “David Zaslav had a particularly tough day,” Darcy wrote in the newsletter’s opening, making a reference to Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO.
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