In Time Q&A, Chelsea Clinton Doesn't See Her Future In TV News

Although Chelsea Clinton still uses her NBC News Special Correspondent title when she puts her byline on Daily Beast articles, her interview with Time magazine leaves the strong sense there is no NBC News future for Special Chelsea. The entire hiring stunt reeked of Bill-and-Hillary favor-seeking.

Time’s Jim Frederick declared, “So you currently work for NBC and you’re studying for a PhD.” Chelsea left NBC out of her answer: “Well, thankfully, I’m no longer studying.  I’m slogging away on my dissertation.” When he asked where she saw herself in five years, the news business was nowhere in there:

TIME: You wear a lot of hats. In five years, what do you think you’ll be doing?  What does the future hold for you?

CHELSEA: I don’t know.  Right now I work really hard on supporting different organizations or people that I care about and trying to make very real contributions. My husband and I don’t have children yet, and he set up his own fund in April, and we’re both just working really hard. Over the next couple of years I hope to finish my dissertation. I hope to have helped CGI [the Clinton Global Initiative] particularly reach out and enfranchise more young people, and really distilling down the methodology and ethos of making commitments, and democratizing all of that so that more people, and particularly more young people, can feel empowered … I hope to become a better teacher. I love teaching. I find it really helps push my thinking in my own research, but also in thinking about CGI or the Clinton Foundation. And I hope that my colleagues and friends at NYU will really have built a platform around multifaith education and multifaith leadership.

Later, she vaguely mentioned “my work at NBC” as something she’s done (and "really believe in") after being asked if she’s recognized on the street, to which she said:

Daily. In the subway or in Duane Reade or in Whole Foods or walking down the street, people just come up and say, oh, you’re Chelsea Clinton, and I say yes, hi.  Or I’m a Kosovar Albanian refugee, and thank you so much for what your father did.  Or what would have happened if your parents had aborted you? Well, I’m glad they didn’t.  99% of people are really nice and respectful, and the rest are kind of vitriolic. But that’s always been true.

Of course she was asked by the Clinton-loving press if she would run for office eventually, and again she stuck to working for Daddy’s foundation, for now:

And so for me now that’s how the deep belief that politics has to be part of any solution for the future is manifesting itself. In my own future, I don’t know. You asked me earlier about the next five years. In the next five years, I want to do the things I said I wanted to do — finish my PhD, help democratize CGI, continue to work on making the Foundation ever more effective and smart in what it does in the world, but, I don’t know.