We all need heroes in our lives — Sally Jessy Raphael, Gary Coleman, Caitlyn Jenner, Wesley Lowery, Fredricka Whitfield, Dustin Diamond (better known as “Screech“). So many options.
Jane Timm, an on-air MSNBC reporter since March, proudly and bravely names Rolling Stone‘s Sabrina Rubin Erdely among her mentors on her LinkedIn page. She places Erdely in the same category as one of her other mentors: Michael Hastings, who died in a tragic car accident in Los Angeles in 2013.
“Before MSNBC, I was a local reporter pouring over city budgets and sitting through City Council meetings. I cut my teeth in the industry working as researcher at the Village Voice for investigative reporter Wayne Barrett and then as a national politics fact checker at Rolling Stone, where I learned how to find truth amongst piles of documents retracing the steps of great reporters like Michael Hastings and Sabrina Rubin Erdely.”
Erdely is best known for her handling of a now highly discredited UVA story in which a young woman accused several members of a fraternity of rape. On her Wikipedia page, her awards include a GLAAD media award in 2012, as well as “The Worst Journalism in 2014” from Columbia University.
Timm worked with Erdely as a fact checker between May 2011 and October 2012. She went to become a blogger at MSNBC followed by a two-and-a-half year stint as a producer and reporter for “Morning Joe.”
Timm may or may not want to have Erdely edit her LinkedIn page.
