NBCU Taps Claire Atkinson To Lead New Media Business News Team

The business of media business news is about to become a lot more competitive. NBCUniversal says this morning that it has hired Claire Atkinson to be senior media editor leading its first team to monitor the industry for NBC News, MSNBC and NBCNews.com.

The indefatigable former New York Post media business reporter will report to NBC News Digital Executive Editor Catherine Kim. The name of the unit will be announced “soon,” the company says.

“We’re in a time where the media industry is facing incredible change due to technology, social platforms, the marketplace, consumer tastes and behaviors,” Kim says. The new unit will “tell this epic story of the people, power and players that will fundamentally transform media in the decade ahead and what it means for you.”

Atkinson’s team will include Los Angeles-based film and entertainment industry reporter Jim Rainey, formerly of Variety and the Los Angeles Times. It also has Jo Ling Kent, an NBC News and MSNBC correspondent who specializes in the business of media, as well as tech and social media.

They’ll tap a Murderers’ Row of contributors including Recode‘s Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith, former Time Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey, Vanity Fair‘s Gabriel Sherman (author of The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News – and Divided a Country), and longtime author and media entrepreneur Steven Brill.

The NBCU unit apparently will operate separately from CNBC, which also devotes a great deal of time and resources to media business news.

It seems poised to lock horns with the media business news team that CNN has assembled under Reliable Sources host and senior media correspondent Brian Stelter, as well as Fox News’ Mediabuzz with Howard Kurtz.