The day TV news died

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9QEUfkRkZ0]You can argue that TV news, as folks from my generation knew it, died on Friday.  Not only because Walter Cronkite died, but because the network that his carried on his back for almost two decades decided not to blow up entertainment programing on the east coast and ran reruns instead.

CBS execs say that’s because no one watches on Friday nights and they wanted folks to watch the pre-produced special they ran on Sunday.  But for a man who created the art form of the breaking news story on television, not to report his death in the same manner was the highest form of irony and injustice at the same time.

Perhaps, as Brian Williams and Dan Rather explained in that special Sunday from their own unique perspectives, TV News actually died in 1981 the night Cronkite signed off at the same time.  Paraphrasing Williams, he said he couldn’t help wondering that night whether TV news would ever be the same.  For Rather, it was the fact that no one not even he could replace Cronkite, a fact that remains to this day.

For many including myself, Walter Cronkite was the face and voice of their childhood.  I was born in 1961 and remember vividly the events of my youth, from the Kennedy’s to Martin to the Moon to Watergate being reported and explained to me by this man.  He created the art form that was the television news anchor.  An art form that sadly today many try to copy but no one can replicate.

In some ways Cronkite was the very first social media practitioner, following the principles of honesty, transparency, consistency, etc.  In many ways he was and always will be the best.

Maybe that’s way I shake my head sometimes when people are quick to say that “citizen journalism” practiced on platforms like Twitter are the future of journalism.  When I grew up that journalism was delivered by people like Cronkite who reported facts that needed to be double and triple checked and only on those rare and powerful occasions interjected his opinion and emotion.  I’m afraid that many today check the facts at the door and lead with opinion for effect.

As we enter into this next era of journalism fueled by this explosion of technology I hope future journalists do not regard Cronkite as a distant memory.  In many ways it was the last explosion of technology (television, phone, satellite, etc.) that allows him to shine.  May others follow his example as we ride this next wave.