THOUGHTS ON JENNINGS
end of an icon
For some strange reason, I've been on a total Peter Jennings eulogy kick since yesterday, TIVOing all the major network evening news shows, two morning shows, listening to NewsHour and other NPR reports online, staying up late to watch the repeat of Larry King Live plus Nightline.
The strange thing is: I was never a Jennings fan growing up - I always rolled with Brokaw - but given Jennings' death, plus Brokaw and Rather's retirements, all happening so recently - I realize that a big part of my childhood memories have now really passed into the proverbial dustbin of history.
It's funny because I used to impatiently tolerate the evening newscasts as a way to get to primetime but now that I'm much older and a news junkie and a journalist of sorts too, I appreciate what these newscasters have represented as icons and proponents for an old school vision of news that has been torn asunder in a cable news/internet age. I've dealt with that latter change far better - not the least of which is because I'm neck deep in it myself - but what Peter, Tom and Dan represented has not - and probably cannot - be duplicated in the new microverses of news that populate our mediascape. Now, for better or for worse, they're gone and with it, I selfishly mourn not just Jennings' passing but the own loss of an anchor (in both senses of the word) from my youth that I just assumed would always be there in some way or another.
(By the way, can I just say that Barbara Walters looks way too young for her age while Dan Rather seems to have aged by a decade since leaving the anchor desk. Brokaw = still dapper.)
<< Home