Chelsea Clinton, Journalist, Is At Least Better Than Jenna Bush, Journalist

Last night on Rock Center, Chelsea Clinton filed her first report as a full-fledged journalist. The daughter of President Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played it safe: No bizarre crime; no far-flung warn-torn countries. Instead, Chelsea went to her home state of Arkansas and profiled Annette Dove, a woman from Pine Bluff, who runs a program for the city’s poorest children. (There’s just a small snippet of her report in the clip above; if you want to watch the full ten-minute segment, check out the video below.)

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Clinton also sat down with Brian Williams and discussed her decision to go from her “deliberately private life” to “lead more of a purposely public life.” It was from the urging of her grandmother, Dorothy Howell Rodham, who died earlier this year. Rodham’s childhood has been called “Dickensian,” she came of age during the Depression and worked as a housekeeper, cook and nanny. Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote of Dorothy Rodham:

My mother was offended by the mistreatment of any human being, especially children. She understood from personal experience that many children — through no fault of their own — were disadvantaged and discriminated against from birth… She hated self-righteousness and pretensions of moral superiority and impressed on my brothers and me that we were no better or worse than anyone else.

Chelsea Clinton’s desire to highlight people making a difference is admirable, although she was already a do-gooder, since she works with her father’s philanthropic powerhouse the Clinton Global Initiative. Obviously someone who grew up in the White House, has master’s degrees from Oxford and Columbia (not to mention the doctoral degree she’s pursuing) could do whatever she wants. But profiling someone from a small town in your homestate is fairly softball. So it remains to be seen whether or not Clinton as actual skills as a journalist and story-teller. Here’s what we do know: So far, she’s better than Jenna Bush.