How Vladimir Duthiers went from 40-year-old journalism school intern to success at ‘CBS Mornings’
In April 2023, CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers attended the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington, where he met a high-profile fan.
“I know this guy,” was how Vice President Kamala Harris greeted Duthiers when they were introduced.
“7:47, every day.”
Harris, now the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, was referring to the time when “CBS Mornings” viewers find Duthiers on his popular regular segment, “What to Watch.”
For four minutes every weekday morning, he regales co-hosts Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil and Nate Burleson with information on an upcoming news event or the latest pop culture trend. If you need to know why the word “demure” is blowing up on social media, Duthiers is your guy.
Nielsen data show that the program’s ratings have been known to spike in the quarter hour when he is scheduled to come on.
At a time when consumers are moving away from traditional TV news, Duthiers, who recently celebrated his 10th anniversary at the network, has become a personality that people will make an appointment to watch. He has evolved into the fourth wheel on “CBS Mornings,” where he frequently fills in as co-host.
Not bad for a quintessential late bloomer — a guy who took a risky career pivot in his late 30s, running up his credit card debt as he traded a high-paying life in finance to dive into journalism during a time of major upheaval for the industry.
Although Duthiers was determined to work in journalism, he never expected to be in front of the camera. A first-generation American of French-Haitian descent with a first name inspired by his biological father’s love for Russian literature, he grew up feeling like an outsider.
“I had some friends, but I was very much of a loner,” Duthiers said of his youth spent mostly in the New York area. “If you asked them, they would tell you that guy on television is not the guy we grew up with.”
As he approached his 40s, Duthiers, 54, had put in nearly two decades in investment management, earning a mid-six-figure income at the firm AllianceBernstein. He lived in six countries and traveled the world making billion-dollar deals with banks and governments. He had 10 people reporting to him.
But that was not his original plan.
A lifelong news junkie, he grew up glued to the “Today” show and “60 Minutes.” After graduating from the University of Rhode Island, where he worked at the student newspaper and radio station, Duthiers sent resumes to newsrooms around the country. He never got a call, and listened to friends who told him to get a job on Wall Street.
Although Duthiers succeeded in finance, he felt like a fish out of water. If he brought up tragic international news events with colleagues, their response was, “Who cares? We’re making deals,” he recalled. When he talked about his journalism aspirations, they told him to shop himself as a TV news contributor — essentially a paid guest — to opine on business and finance.
“I said, I don’t want to be a pundit or a talking head. I want to be a journalist,” he said.
Once Duthiers saved enough to pay his mortgage and tuition for two years, he took his shot enrolling at Columbia Journalism School in 2009. At the same time, he applied for entry-level jobs. His age and resume drew skepticism.
“Most big-name outlets were not interested,” he said. “They all thought I was going through a midlife crisis.”
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Duthiers finally landed an unpaid internship at CNN, working on Christiane Amanpour’s program. Before he started, he took a tour of the network’s New York headquarters with his journalism school class. It forever changed his career trajectory.
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper made it a habit to meet with students who visited the network’s offices and immediately noticed Duthiers, who, unlike the others, was wearing a tie.
“He just immediately stood out,” Cooper said in an interview.
Cooper told Duthiers to stop by and see him once the internship began. It led to him being hired as a production assistant on “Anderson Cooper 360°.”
“One of the reasons I wanted to help was I thought what he was doing was so ballsy,” Cooper said. “He was risking everything.”
Duthiers scheduled his Columbia classes in the morning and went to work in the afternoon until 11 p.m., performing tasks handled by entry-level staffers.
“There were days I would go home with tears in my eyes,” he said. “I didn’t even know how to type.”
But not long after he started, a devastating earthquake hit Haiti. Remembering that Duthiers was fluent in French and Creole, Cooper’s producers sent him with the anchor to the disaster zone, where they spent six weeks covering the story.
Cooper said Duthiers was built to handle the stress.
“If he had been 21 years old, I would have been more concerned about putting somebody through that situation,” Cooper said. “I just had a feeling about him, that he had enough life experience and he knows what he wants, so let’s have him do it.”
“He didn’t want to leave,” Cooper added.
When Duthiers returned, CNN offered him a job as a correspondent, but at a lower starting salary than usual due to his level of experience. He told them he would do it for free, words his agent told him he should never speak again.
Duthiers was assigned to the network’s bureau in Lagos, Nigeria. He won a Peabody Award for his reporting on the more than 200 girls kidnapped from their school by the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. He roamed Africa, the Middle East and Thailand, covering breaking stories for the network for the next two years.
When he returned to the U.S., he caught the attention of CBS News, where executives immediately embraced his combination of youthful looks and life experience that now included several years of reporting from the field.
“He had the capacity, interest and curiosity of a novice, but with the work ethic of someone who already had a full career,” said Diana Miller, a former executive producer of CBS’ morning program.
Duthiers was hired as a weekend correspondent, but was immediately given opportunities at the anchor desk on the morning program. When CBS News launched its 24-hour streaming service in 2014, management tapped him to be a part of it. In addition to “CBS Mornings,” Duthiers anchors for CBS News 24/7, including a new daily whip-around show
on the free streaming service where he monitors live news events shown on a wall of screens.
Miller, who got to know Duthiers when they both worked at CNN, came up with “What to Watch.” She believed the CBS morning program needed a regular segment that viewers would seek out every day, and believed Duthiers had the tools to make it work.
“He lights up at such an array of topics and news and culture,” Miller said. “We knew he’d have the energy and have fun with it.”
Duthiers’ ebullience did not come naturally. A shy kid who often changed schools, he was bullied. He said he’s been described as “racially ambiguous,” and people frequently asked him about his ethnic background.
Time spent alone growing up turned Duthiers into a voracious reader and consumer of movies and TV shows. He’s turned that into an asset when he enthusiastically engages with actors, musical artists or authors who appear as guests on “CBS Mornings.” (In a full-circle moment, Duthiers interviewed Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, when they collaborated on a book.)
“People say to me, ‘Man, can you really be that excited?’” he said. “I tell them these people pour their heart and soul into work that they are proud of. At the very least, I should celebrate that.”
Duthiers is part of a Peabody Award-winning couple. He is married to Marian Wang, a senior producer on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” “But she has two [Peabodys],” he noted.
Duthiers knows he is something of a unicorn in the news industry, where jobs are disappearing fast. At CBS, widespread cuts are expected with parent company Paramount Global’s planned merger with Skydance Media. Paramount Global is aiming to cut 2,000 jobs, or 15% of its staff, by year’s end. He knows that most of the people in his Columbia Journalism School class are not in the business.
“My experience is that if you make yourself indispensable and you show true passion for this craft, you will be able to get a job,” he said. “Columbia sort of holds me up as an example of what can happen. I don’t know if that will work for everybody.”
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