Dylan Byers is an American journalist. He is a senior media reporter at NBC News and MSNBC and the author of Byers Market, a daily newsletter covering the business of media, technology and entertainment.
Early life and education
Dylan Byers was born to Margaret Carol Lewis and Judson Thomas "Tom" Byers of Seattle, Washington. Both parents served as deputy mayor of Seattle, with a gap between them: Margaret first, then Tom nine years later. Margaret was subsequently the director of a network of philanthropists in the Seattle area, and Judson is a founding partner of a public policy consulting firm. Dylan Byers attended Bard College, from which he graduated in 2008.
Career
Byers has worked as a research assistant to New Yorker writers Philip Gourevitch, George Packer, and Jane Kramer. He began his journalism career as a media and tech reporter for Adweek. He later moved to Politico and launched the "On Media" blog in November 2011. On Media became known as a "scoop heavy blog" for media and political news. Byers created and grew the blog, and critics praised it as "workaholic media-politics coverage," specific to Byers' niche of the intersection between politics and media. While at Politico, Byers wrote "“President Obama, off the record," an article providing readers a glimpse into an ‘off the record’ side of US President Barack Obama. For that story, he was a finalist in the 2014 Mirror Awards competition for Best Single Article in Digital Media. In September 2015, fellow media reporter Brian Stelter announced that Byers was joining CNN. In his announcement, Stelter wrote, "Byers is a scoop machine... When I’ve been offline for more than a few hours, the way I see what I’ve missed is by checking his Twitter feed." Byers joined NBC in September 2018.
Controversy
In 2012, Byers drew scrutiny when he reported in Politico that US PresidentBarack Obama's girlfriend in Dreams from My Father was a composite character, which was already acknowledged by Obama in the book. Politico issued an extensive correction at the top of the original article. Byers was also criticized for "Turbulence at The Times," a critical profile about former New York Timesexecutive editorJill Abramson, which quoted many anonymous staffers who said she was difficult to work with. Several commentators labeled Byers's piece as sexist. Abramson was let go from the New York Times the following year. In 2017, Sean Hannity and Juan Williams challenged portions of a Byers CNN report. Byers reported that three sources stated an on-air dispute between the two lead to Hannity aiming a gun at Williams off air. Byers reported that it was just Hannity "showing off" but was disturbing to Williams and others present. Fox News investigated and "found that no one was put in any danger". Hannity later said the gun was not loaded and "Never pointed at anybody." Williams said the story was being sensationalized and that he did not feel he had been in harm's way. On November 21, 2017, Byers posted a tweet on his account implying that the recent sexual harassment scandals in media and entertainment were draining those industries of talent. The tweet was later deleted.
