Dylan Ratigan Lands at MSNBC

Three months ago, I wrote an Open Letter to Dylan Ratigan with my case as to why he should stick with financial media after his departure from CNBC. At the time I laid out two options that seemed most probable for him:

So as you evaluate new options, I am sure there are many but as I see it, they basically fall into two camps: (1) extreme consumerism, which you’ve proven you can do, (2) smart, actual financial news for financial professionals.

As it turns out, he chose option one and took a job anchoring a new show launched today called Morning Meeting on MSNBC. This is disappointing to me and a waste of his considerable talent with financial news. But as I said in the Open Letter, there’s more money in option one, and I guess a financial guy who’s paid his dues is inclined to go for the money. The problem with straight consumer news is that it’s mostly rhetoric and bile rather than research and report. The new CNBC since August 2007 has taken financial news, normally a space where research and report is hard to stray from, and turned it into rhetoric and bile. I attribute this to two primary things: (1) their need to compete with Fox Business which launched October 2007 with a FoxNews signature inflame-the-consumer approach, and (2) the fact that the financial crisis blew wide open in August 2007 and instead of becoming an analytical voice of reason, CNBC instead chose to stoke the fire and outrage with consumers.

I had written off CNBC but held out hope for Ratigan. Now he too looks to be off the trusted financial media players list. Unfortunate but again, can’t fault the man for taking the paycheck.