Piers Morgan on the DailyMail: ‘It’s An Extraordinary Beast Now’

By Chris Ariens 

Seven months into his role as editor at large at DailyMail.com, Piers Morgan has found he’s having an impact “far bigger than I ever thought it would be.”

The mandate was simple: “They wanted me to play off the stuff I did at CNN in terms of talking about social issues or entertainment. I have a completely free brief,” Morgan told TVNewser ahead of Thursday’s NewFront presentation for DailyMail and EliteDaily.

During the NewFront — the DailyMail’s first — Morgan touted some of the traffic his stories have received. His column on the burning alive of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasabeh in February, has been viewed more than 2 million times, far more than the viewership he had at CNN.

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Morgan, who jetted back to London after the event to continue production on the 13th season of his ITV program Piers Morgan’s Life Stories, says he doesn’t miss much about life on U.S. TV. “I had a great time at CNN. It’s unfortunate the way it all got pictured when I left. But I have no bad feeling about CNN at all.”

Morgan says he’s got “two or three things” in the works that could put him back on TV. But the former America’s Got Talent judge and Celebrity Apprentice winner says it’s not in the reality realm. “If they come off it would be quite fun.”

With editing stints at three British newspapers — Daily Mirror, News of the World and The Sun — Morgan is seeing the true reach of DailyMail.com, with its 225 million global visitors per month.

“As a media person, I ask myself ‘where am I best served on camera?’ And it may not be traditional journalism, it may very well be online.”

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