With Melissa Harris-Perry’s MSNBC show in its second week, the Washington Post takes a look back at her quick ascent from guest to contributor to host:
Harris-Perry can’t remember the first time she appeared on TV — “probably in college,” she says — but she’s been a regular on the national television news stage since about 2004, when she made appearances on PBS and CNN as a talking head. In 2006, she began appearing on MSNBC, first as a guest and then, in 2010, as a regular contributor and substitute-host for such stars as Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell. [Phil] Griffin, impressed with her smarts, decided last fall to groom her for bigger things.
“She had it,” said the MSNBC president, talking by phone from his office in New York’s Rockefeller Center last week. “What you see a little bit at other channels is executives hiring brand names, thinking they’re going to get big numbers and a big audience, and it not working. What we’re doing here is building from within.”
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