We've seen the bankruptcy of many newspapers. We've seen a further erosion of the line between news and entertainment. But I do believe that there is reason to hope that over time we will see the higher-quality journalism rise to the surface.
We'll never see national shows with 45 shares again.
In a way, film and television are in the same sort of traumatic trance that print journalism is. The technology has outpaced our comprehension of its implications.
Andy Stasiuk was a newsman of the old school of front-page journalism - tough, knowledgeable, cynical, single-minded and fun. He covered the news as a happy warrior in an era of cutthroat editorial competition.
There was a time when idealistic folksingers such as myself believed that Reality TV was a programming vogue that would peak and recede, leaving only its hardiest show-offs. Instead, it has metastasized like toxic mold, filling every nook and opening new crannies.
I think the era of access journalism as we've known it is over.
I don't want to romanticize the world in which everybody watched three networks and the Washington Post and the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were incredibly dominant. That time has passed.
The ouster of Jill Abramson as executive editor of 'The New York Times' sent shock waves through the media landscape. Reports that she was fired thanks in part to a soured relationship based on the 'Times' alleged sexist pay discrepancy only made those shock waves stronger.
I had gone to all the big stories of the '80s, which was one of the most fertile times in American journalism, around the world and here as well.
When I was growing up in the U.S. in the 1970s, 35-40% of an average nightly newscast focused on international stories.
I think people of my generation became journalists - you know, right after the broadcast pioneer fathers - because we wanted to report the big stories.
When people think about CNN today, they think about our television coverage, politics, and Donald Trump. And I get it; I'm not suggesting that's wrong. But I think there is a much bigger story going on at CNN.
Back 20 years ago, there was a division between movie actors and TV actors. That's kind of gone away. People who have had a lot of success in movies in the past now want to be on TV. There used to be much more of a quality division between TV and movies, and that's kind of not the case anymore.
The newspaper industry when I came along in the mid-70s was rich and powerful and growing and hungry for material and open to new people. None of that is true in the newspaper industry today. Print in general is pretty rugged. The good thing is that you can gain a foothold on the Internet because everybody has access to it, even things like Twitter - I mean, you can get a reputation for being funny pretty quickly on Twitter, on a blog, that kind of thing.
I really am convinced that what is happening in media today is the result of the birth of conservative media and its rapid growth and ascension. It has destroyed the left's monopoly in media. When they had the monopoly, they could pretend that they were not what they are and get away with it. They could pretend to be objective. You know, the power of a monopoly is not just determining what stories you are going to cover, but what you don't cover is just as powerful.
The idea behind Mediaite was always to focus on the punditry, focus on the personalities behind the political media.
I'm not here to say that I want to change the TV industry.
What I worry about the most is the competition for young eyeballs. We have so many other competing forms of media. I don't take any audience members for granted.
I think the networks, in general, have to evaluate what's happening around them. I'm sure they're scared about a lot of things: Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and all these places that allow people to watch shows in chunks.
It's no secret that the media has fragmented in recent years, that audiences have been cut into slivers, and that more and more people get their news from ever narrower outlets.
We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They've heard it on the radio. They've seen it on the Internet. They've seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.
I've dealt with a lot of media and I know the New York media different, for sure.
I don't think there are too many traditional media guys who really understood what the new digital media is about.
The TV season is a year-long thing now, and the networks are starting to look at it that way, thanks to cable, satellites, and competition.
I have no problem being mainstream. I grew up in the '90s when the mainstream was amazing.
