t was only a week into his new venture and NBC’s Dan Abrams was in

the office of his two-floor townhouse in New York’s West Village,

already feeling a little besieged by the media. Some of his journalistic

coevals were scratching their heads over whether Dan Abrams the TV

newsman might have a conflict of interest with Dan Abrams founder and

CEO of Abrams Research, his brand new consulting firm.

“We are a global community of media professionals. That global

community is going to be available for consulting on a whole range of

issues,” Abrams tells me over the phone. “But I guess what makes us different is that

our community is all current, or recently former, media professionals who are avail-

able for consulting. And also the other difference is we’re calling it a transactional

model, which means you don’t have to put up a retainer to hire us.” According to

the company’s website, Abrams Research will offer “insights, data and personnel

never before available to businesses for image enhancement, branding, investigative

reporting and the execution of the best media plan.”

His skeptics were probably confused by Abrams’ recent identity as a hardcore

TV journalist. He was a Court TV reporter who covered the O.J. Simpson trial and

the International War Crimes Tribunal back in the 1990s; an NBC News and

MSNBC correspondent who reported on such major stories as the Oklahoma City

bombing trials, President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, Gore v. Bush and the debate

over the U.S. military’s treatment of detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo; and host of

MSNBC’s The Abrams Report and Verdict with Dan Abrams.

Verdict, however, was recently replaced by The Rachel Maddow Show. As a

result, the 42-year-old single Manhattan native is now forging a new identity, as

chief legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, substitute anchor for The Today

Show and CEO of Abrams Research.

It could also be that the skeptics were just picking on him because he’s a TV

celebrity and a fresh target in this brave new corporate media world. In that spirit, I

came up with this scenario: What if, say, Abrams Research acquired Donald Rums-

feld as a client, and then MSNBC called in Abrams for some analysis on whether a

special nonpartisan commission should investigate whether the former Defense Sec-

retary might be prosecuted for condoning the use of torture in the war on terror?

Abrams was already responding before I had finished my question. “If my firm

is representing someone who ends up being in the news for some reason, I’ll be like

any other analyst, any other contributor for any other network,” he said tersely.

“Which is to say that there are legal analysts out there who have for years been paid

by networks to come in and offer legal analysis. If it regards one of their clients, they

disclose it. And they either don’t talk about it, or they talk about it as somebody who

is representing them. This is really important. But it’s not nearly as hard as some

people are trying to make it out to be.” He added, “We are not seeking to employ a

full-time journalist with a standards and practices manual that says that they can’t

do it. And that’s going to be the vast majority of those journalists who are with

major media outlets.”

Those lucky full-timers aside, competition for gigs with Abrams Research is

fierce. A week after the first burst of publicity, led by articles in The Wall Street Jour-

nal and The New York Times, about 800 people had submitted applications offering

their services to the new venture. As usual, people who knew people had a leg up.

Prior to the launch, Abrams and former Huffington Post blogger Rachel Sklar com-

piled an initial list of media professionals with whom they were acquainted, and then

asked them to recommend others.

“This is really a startup in some ways, and in some ways it’s pretty amazing how

many people are involved,” Abrams said. “On one level it’s a small team of people,

and on the other hand we have thousands of people already around the world who

are ready, willing and able to work with us.”

Abrams’ career has been pretty storybook. His father, Floyd Abrams, who is a

celebrated First Amendment lawyer, helped inspire in Dan and his sister a somewhat

precocious interest is the legal world. “When we were kids, the way we would con-

vince our dad to stay in our rooms and not make us go to sleep was to make him tell

us about his cases,” Abrams recalled. “So we were indoctrinated young in the law.”

(His sister Ronnie Abrams recently returned to private practice after years as a pros-

ecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan.)

Thinking he might be a lawyer when he grew up, the young Dan also imagined

himself on television. While attending Duke University, he anchored newscasts on

the school’s TV station. After graduating in 1988, NBC Sports hired him to haul

camera cables and perform other chores at Wimbledon and the Summer Olympics

in Seoul. That fall, wondering if a career in television was really his cup of tea,

Abrams entered Columbia University’s law school. During his third year, Steven

Brill, the founder of The American Lawyer magazine, launched Court TV. “I

thought, ‘Hey, there’s a place that does a combination of things I’m interested in: TV

and law.’ And so I came in as an associate producer,” he recalled.

He started cutting and writing video pieces—and putting together demo tapes.

“I used to go in at 2:30 in the morning when the whole network was basically shut

down,” he reminisced. “I got a guy who used to do our news breaks to show me how

to turn on the camera and turn up the audio. So I’d go in, put on a microphone, and

I’d practice in the middle of the night. I used to record myself and watch it and try to

improve.”

After a year and a half, Brill gave him a shot to be on the air and he started

reporting. Five months later, he was assigned to cover the O.J. Simpson trial. While

that was going on, he had a side gig as an analyst for The Today Show.

His decade as a full-timer with NBC News and MSNBC culminated in mid-

2007 with his 9 p.m. slot as anchor of The Verdict. But in September, his show was

replaced. “I’m very proud of the show that we did. The ratings were great. It just

76 TRUMP WINTER 2008/09

INSIDE MANAmid skepticism and interest, MSNBC vet Dan Abrams launches a new kind of media consulting firm

BY KIRK NIELSEN PORTRAITS BY CAMERON KRONE

I

“If my firm is representing someone who ends up in the news, I’ll be like any other analyst for any other network.”

DAN ABRAMS_TRUMP_WINTER 12/10/08 2:09 PM Page 76

WINTER 2008/09 TRUMP 77

Dan Abrams, veteran TV newsman,forges a new path as founder and CEOof Abrams Research.

DAN ABRAMS_TRUMP_WINTER 12/10/08 2:10 PM Page 77

wasn’t the right show for the network at that particular time,” he explained. “As

the network became more political, I probably wasn’t the right person for that

show. I couldn’t do what needed to be done to make that show work. I think that

now, from 8 to 11 p.m., MSNBC has a prime time that is intellectually consistent.

And I think that that is very important in cable news.”

It was more important for Abrams, however, to pursue another dream. “The

problem is, I always had this idea and this desire to start my own business. And

this is my time,” he said. “This is the right time for this business, both for me and

for the business model.”

For example, if a company was planning to relocate to St. Louis and wanted

to know about media in that city, Abrams Research could assemble a panel of

experts who really know St. Louis media. Or Abrams might hire a former inves-

tigative journalist from the The Houston Chronicle to prepare a report on an oil

and gas company for a firm considering buying that oil and gas company. Abrams

thinks his new firm will be especially useful in advising companies interested in

buying media businesses.

The most radical component of his model has to do with co-opting members

of a media subculture not known for their desire to help the corporate world:

bloggers. “I think that a lot of businesses are intimidated by bloggers and by new

media,” Abrams submitted. “What we’re thinking to do is bring together some of

those bloggers with businesses, to advise them on how to refine their message on

why it is that certain things resonate or don’t.”

No one knows how much and how far Abrams Research will resonate. But

shortly after opening shop, he and Sklar were already in discussion with about 15

prospective clients. They had also formed strategic partnerships with two PR firms

in the U.S.—Dan Klores Communications and The Abernathy MacGregor

Group—and had been on the phone with others in Croatia and Vietnam. Of

course, with a lot of evidence related to worldwide economic downturn still

uncovered, the verdict on Abrams Research won’t likely be read for a long time.

DAN ABRAMS

Abrams was heavilyinfluenced by his father(right), renowned FirstAmendment attorneyFloyd Abrams.

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Abrams hosted MSNBC shows The Abrams Report and Verdict with Dan Abrams.

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Abrams stays connected, pictured here inthe office of his Manhattan home.

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“This is the right time for this business, both for me and for the business model.”

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