#cronkite

It just hit me that those of us who spent most of our childhood dinner-times with Cronkite and the CBS Evening News on the TV, hearing how many of our boys were being killed in Viet Nam every day are having a very, very old trigger pulled on us by the daily death totals here now.

This ties into my earlier post today about feeling “immobilized” by all this shit. 

Those nightly death totals back then?  They were peoples’ big brothers, sons, cousins.  But it was happening far, far away.  Not HERE.  Never HERE.

Until now.

Like many American families in the 60s and 70s, mine watched the evening news. It was as predictable as dinner, with the latter usually preceding the former. For some reason, my family was loyal to the NBC affiliate in Chicago. Regardless, I became a news junky, and when I went off to college, I continued, even if I was watching on the community TV in the dorm’s “living room.”

At least there were a few others into the news, even if I couldn’t always change the channel.

By my senior year, I had an apartment with two roommates who were equally addicted to the news. It was our evening mainstay. I have vivid memories of 6th March 1981, the three of us eyes glued as Walter Cronkite bid the newsroom adieu and rode if into a semi-retirement sunset. He was an anchor…not just on the program, but socially. He was trusted. In fact, he was probably the most trusted voice in news. Sidebar: ADIEU is always my lead-off word in the daily Wordle.

Ah, those were simpler times, when the three networks—CBS, ABC, and NBC—had a lock on the news. There was no other competition, aside from an upstart cable channel called CNN that had launched in 1980. But their newfangled approach—24/7 news—had not yet caught on.

It is recollections like these that prompted CBS News boss, Bari Weiss, to comment this week to her staff about the future of their operations. She invoked the memory of Cronkite, saying he was a “symbol of old thinking,” and that if they were to continue down that path into the future, “we’re toast.”

It’s not that Cronkite was bad, because he wasn’t. He was the bleeding edge in reporting and commentary simply because network TV was all we had for live news. Today, as Weiss astutely pointed out, the competition is intense. “He had two competitors. We have two billion, give or take.”

She’s right. Who watches the evening news anymore these days? I rarely watch network TV, aside from Jeopardy on our local CBS affiliate. On the rare occasion I catch Jeopardy in real time, I might linger on a few minutes into the 5pm newscast to see the weather, but more times than not, I catch my Jeopardy on the DVR function in my YouTube TV. Time shifting is such a common thing that pretty much everyone in the TV business has given up trying to maintain a live audience.

Instead, we get our news from a variety of sources, the bulk of which are in digital formats. I know I do. I know the news long before it could ever appear on TV. Savvy networks and local stations have mobilized reporters to sniff out leads, chase them down, then post them to social media, sometimes even in a Facebook Live event.

The shift started subtly in the 80s and 90s, with a growing number of cable news outlets. But the 21st century brought the rise of citizen journalism, first because of cheap digital cameras, and then after 2007, with smartphones and always-on internet connectivity. Heck, it was very common for all news agencies to be scooped by a rando who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

And so rather than try to fight it, the smart outlets figured out a way to embrace it, welcoming people to submit UGC, or user-generated content. They acknowledged that they couldn’t be everywhere, but they could give you your 15 seconds of fame by posting your image to their socials or even on their broadcasts.

Stir in mobile apps, and we have even less reason to ever wait to watch something on TV. It has gotten to the point that about the only thing that has at-the-moment currency is the weather, and even that is debatable given the supply of weather apps available.

Weiss is doing everything she can to maintain relevance for her network, at a time when that honor is fleeting. Public trust is a huge factor, and given that she held a 60 Minutes segment critical of President Trump for a month, viewers are wondering if the network is buddying up with the MAGA crowd.

I know. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s a pretty hot seat, and I wouldn’t want to be in it.

The big takeaway, though, is how we consume our news these days, if we choose to consume any at all. For news freaks like me, I love it. I follow many outlets so I can hear different voices, and then make up my own mind. Other people prefer an echo chamber that is merely confirmation bias in a suit.

Once again, our digital lifestyle has dealt a major blow to legacy organizations and companies. Things have changed significantly not just in how we shop and live our lives, but also in how we get our information.

As Walter Cronkite used to end his newscast each night, “And that’s the way it is.”

Dr “He Was A Gem” Gerlich

Business, political, migrant advocates kick off campaign for Prop 308 – Cronkite News

Arizona currently denies in-state tuition to undocumented students who live in the state, but that could change with Proposition 308 this fall. The measure would allow any state resident who graduated from a high school in the state to qualify for in-state tuition at the state’s universities. (File photo by Emily L. Mahoney/Cronkite News) WASHINGTON – A broad-based group of political, business…