Changing of the Guard: Jon Stewart

I am happy to continue watching Jon Stewart on The Daily Show each night as he tells the real news and heckles the pretenders (Fox News being formost). I can pretend it will never end, but we know it will. 

Does this mean Fox News wins? Not really. The news in general is losing, and Fox simply runs one brand of loser.

When I watch ABC News what I see is the local news writ large. Everyone gets excited about snow, we all feign shock about a Football Star beating his wife, and we wait for the celebrity piece.  In fact, now that I think about it, local news is more relevant. I don't expect an interview with an intelligent author on the evening news, similar to The Daily Show.  I don't expect analysis of the big stories, unless it's a deep question such as, "What can we do to avoid the flu?" Of course, the evening news is only a little better when you compare it the morning news shows, such as Today, which have become puppy parades and cooking shows.

Television shows such as 60 Minutes (yes, your grandfather's show but still standing) can still compete with magazines, but the evening news cannot compete with a newspaper. Only the newspaper provides a choice of 200+ potential stories every day that acknowledges a world outside the 50 states (unless we are bombing a foreign locale, and then it is newsworthy for TV). Nor can television news compete with a smart phone loaded with news apps, which continue to kills the newspapers even though the newspapers have the only news worth stealing (or "linking to" to play into the jargon).

So do we need a new leader of snarky news? We still have plenty, including offshoots from The Daily Show. So we are safe for now.

What we maybe need is a better audience that demands more if its leaders and themselves. If we won't pay newspapers to send teams to faraway places, we cannot feign surprise when the government's version of the truth is all we get. And we cannot hold corporate America's feet to the fire, and avoid future scandals and collapses, unless we have a media capable of more than printing corporate press releases. 

That may mean we need to pay for our news from time to time. We can amuse ourselves to death with a tweet about the latest celebrity shenanigans or learn something more about the world about us. The mind (and jobs) you save may be your own.