Jun 5
Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) serving as a United Press reporter during World War II
seen from Poland
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Brazil
seen from Poland
seen from Poland
seen from Poland
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Poland
seen from China
seen from China
seen from China
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Poland
seen from United Kingdom
seen from China
seen from United Kingdom
Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) serving as a United Press reporter during World War II
Deja Vu...
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.
Took awhile for me to make that connection, but it rings true.
Walter Cronkite (at right, 1916-2009), later of CBS News, with the crew of the B-26 medium bomber “U.S.O.” of the 323rd Bomb Group just before a mission (February 9, 1944)
News You Can Use
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
Audio Blog
Business, political, migrant advocates kick off campaign for Prop 308 - Cronkite News
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…
View On WordPress
Join me. I'm glad to sit here at the right hand of Satan.
Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News Anchor, 1999. 401 Quote Card No. 1704. Find more at patreon.com/davidhooper
This Day in Environmental History – On March 18, 1937 at 3:17 pm, a natural gas leak caused a massive explosion at a school in New London, Texas that killed 298 students and teachers with another 300 suffering serious injury. It is stilled considered the deadliest school accident in US history. The leak went undetected due to natural gas being both invisible and odorless. Following the disaster, governments both in the US and around the world began mandating that a chemical called mercaptan be added to natural gas, which would provide for a strong odor (rotten eggs smell) that could be easily detected by humans. A young reporter named Walter Cronkite covered the event that day on one of his first assignments. In 1996, he was quoted as saying, "I did nothing in my studies nor in my life to prepare me for a story of the magnitude of that New London tragedy, nor has any story since that awful day equaled it.”