I just watched the last episode of ABC's Nightline with Ted Koppel (on Tivo), and I'll be damned if the last few seconds ended with humor instead of sadness.
I view the departure of Koppel with serious concern. With the retirement of Rather and Brokaw, the passing of Jennings whom I met as a teenager (my father was a colleague of his and of the same school and quality of analytical reporting), and now the stepping down of Koppel, serious news is in a sorry state.
Many of the 24 hour news channels are unwatchable (the most egregious offense being Headline News which appears to have been purposefully repackaged to mock journalism). Many of the current news "reporters" being groomed for anchordom earned their chops on morning shows interviewing reality TV stars and celebrity chefs or on tabloid TV investigating unwed mothers rather than providing heady analyses of world politics backed with an encyclopedic knowledge of history (or with backgrounds in print journalism, as Shales points out in the link below).
To get back to my point, Koppel ended his last Nightline show by telling of a quiz he used to give to Nightline interns where he would recite the names of many past renowned anchors. Most of the names--Huntley, Severeid, Brinkley--went unrecognized by the interns, yet Koppel noted that the passing of those heavyweights from the glow of TV didn't diminish the quality of television journalism because the baton was passed on to other worthy successors. Koppel's last commentary before his signoff, which abated for a few seconds my sense of a heavy curtain falling on the integrity and respect of the anchor position, were as follows:
What none of these young men and women in their late teens and early twenties appreciates, until I pointed out to them, is that they have just heard the names of seven anchormen or commentators who were once so famous that everyone in the country knew their names. Everybody. Trust me, the transition from one anchor to another is not that big a deal. Cronkite begat Rather, Chancellor begat Brokaw, Reynolds begat Jennings, and each of them did a pretty fair job in his own right. You've always been very nice to me, so give this new anchor team from Nightline a fair break. If you don't, I promise you the network will just put another comedy show in this timeslot, and then you'll be sorry.
Ted, I hope you're right, but all I can think of is that Carson begat Leno, and it didn't help that tonight's Nightline was on Thanksgiving dinner foods :(
A couple poignant commentaries on Koppel's departure from Nightline can be read in Shale's Washington Post article and the Cultcha blog.
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