Variety Promotes Ethan Shanfeld to TV Reporter

Variety has promoted Ethan Shanfeld to TV Reporter.

Shanfeld joins the entertainment industry’s largest team of business news reporters covering the fast-evolving world of TV content. His focus will be reporting on activity and trends in the creative community and dealmaking among top networks, streamers and studios. He will also put special emphasis on covering major players in world of comedy. He will work under the direction of Joe Otterson, Senior TV Reporter who is based in New York, and Television Editor Michael Schneider in Los Angeles.

“Ethan Shanfeld wrote his way to this promotion,” said Cynthia Littleton and Ramin Setoodeh, Variety‘s co-Editors in Chief. “Ethan has proven himself to be an insightful reporter, a sharp writer and an extremely hard worker. We are fortunate to have such a talented and enterprising journalist on the masthead.”

Shanfeld first came to Variety in March 2021 as an editorial intern before becoming an associate editor on the Variety.com digital team. Since then, he was written extensively about television, music, film and culture for all Variety platforms.

In 2023, Shanfeld co-authored a Variety magazine cover story on “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which featured interviews with Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. Later that year, he penned the 2023 Power of Young Hollywood cover story on music star Steve Lacy. Earlier this year, he delivered an insightful profile of filmmaker Benny Safdie, focusing on his creative split from his brother Josh Safdie and Showtime series “The Curse.”

Shanfeld has been nominated for five National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards. He has a knack for experiential journalism, as demonstrated in such stories as his visit to a 3:15 a.m. showing of “Dune: Part Two,” watching 73 minutes of feline films at Cat Video Fest and surviving “Twisters” in 4DX.

Prior to Variety, Shanfeld wrote for publications such as Pitchfork, Nylon, and MTV News. He graduated in from Northwestern University in 2022 with a double degree in journalism and legal studies.