Elizabeth Wagmeister Departs Variety to Join CNN in Key Entertainment Reporting Role

Variety chief correspondent and rising star Elizabeth Wagmeister is heading to CNN, where she’ll cover the entertainment beat for the news cabler, based in Los Angeles.

Wagmeister was a driving force who helped Variety reclaim its role as the most-read, No. 1 entertainment news source in the business (often doubling its competition in Comscore rankings). At Variety, she served as an on-camera reporter, as well as a writer, penning widely-seen cover stories on the Kardashian-Jenner family, Kelly Ripa, Olivia Wilde and Colton Underwood — stories that often created their own buzz and news cycle. Wagmeister is also a dogged reporter who led Variety’s coverage of the Harvey Weinstein trial and other #MeToo stories, and extensively covered the Britney Spears conservatorship case.

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Wagmeister was also a co-host of the nationally syndicated entertainment news show “Page Six TV” and Variety‘s “The Take.” She began her career at TV Guide Magazine as the assistant to the editor-in-chief, and later also wrote and reported for the pub. Later, she was senior entertainment editor at HollywoodLife.com, where she oversaw the site’s TV and film vertical.

A University of California Santa Barbara grad, Wagmeister won two Webby awards for hosting Variety’s Power of Women livestream event. She has also won several National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards awards and SoCal Journalism awards and has been recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2019.

Also on Monday, CNN announced that Hanako Montgomery had joined as an international correspondent based in the network’s Tokyo bureau, to “report on key stories from Japan and the region across CNN’s television and digital platforms.” Also, Elisa Raffa will serve as a weather anchor and correspondent for CNN, based in Atlanta. And Julia Benbrook has joined CNN Newsource as a correspondent based in Washington, DC, where she will report for CNN’s more than 1,000 news partners worldwide.

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