Ali Velshi’s Terror Attempt Coverage For CNN Equals “Career Night”

As news broke yesterday and last night about the attempted terror attack, CNN stayed live the longest, until 11pmET, FNC the 2nd longest and MSNBC stayed in doc block programming for the majority of the night.

And the person who anchored CNN’s coverage until the end, Chief Business Correspondent Ali Velshi, was nearly universally praised on Twitter – with the opportunity potentially signaling bigger thing in 2010.

Velshi, and the rest of the CNN team (including Ed Henry, Kate Bolduan, Richard Quest, Deb Feyerick and others) visibly dominated the cable news coverage – at least by the time prime time hit. Jonathan Wald, former SVP at CNBC, tweeted, “Career night for Ali Velshi.”

Some more praise: ESPN.com writer Amy K. Nelson wrote Velshi did an “excellent, excellent job” while New York Times reporter Brian Stelter tweeted: “Kudos to CNN and @alivelshi for rolling live coverage.” Even those who have criticism for some aspects of CNN, like the journalism blog Journalisti, had positive notes: “I may not like CNN.com & CNN Intl’s programming but @alivelshi did a great job anchoring the developing terrorist news on CNN US.”

We asked Velshi for his thoughts on the Christmas night live coverage. He responded to Mediaite via email:

I expected to be taking it easy, doing some news cutins, eating Chinese food we had ordered in, and maybe paying some bills. But what happened is what CNN is great at: news breaks, producers come in of their own volition, reporters call in from their vacations (or, in the case of Richard Quest and Deb Feyerick, got on planes to Amsterdam and Detroit, respectively).

When news breaks at CNN everyone knows exactly what to do without being directed, and for me, anchoring it was about knowing who was where, and what new information they had, or with whom they had just spoken. Tonight was about getting the facts on the ground, discussing the larger implications, and using CNN’s worldwide strength and reach to tell a story like no one else can.

Besides what was seen on-air, Velshi was active on Twitter himself. When someone raised the issue that one of the CNN clips described the suspect as “African American,” he responded in realtime that the network had “killed it out of the system.” “Twitter was great for me tonight because it provided me with questions, ideas and criticisms that allowed me to tweak our coverage,” Velshi tells us.

To be fair, not everyone was happy with all of Velshi’s coverage.

Before Mediaite even launched (but we were still blogging), I made the case why Velshi’s fill-in role for Rick Sanchez could be seen as an “audition for prime time.” This week Velshi filled in for Campbell Brown at 8pmET. While the ratings didn’t show a noticeable improvement, he was working within the constraints of the already established show. But last night was different – there was serious breaking news, and Velshi, with the help of CNN’s vast international resources, kept it interesting and informative. Could one night propel Velshi to the top of the next prime time host short list for CNN in 2010? It should.

• Here’s a taste of Velshi anchoring late last night.

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