Keith Olbermann may be the longest of long shots to replace the late Tim Russert as the host of NBC’s Meet The Press, but that will not matter in the grand scheme of things for NBC News. Two pieces from bastions of the establishment media tell the tale.
Yesterday’s New York Times featured a piece by David Carr on the larger meaning of Russert’s death, titled “In Mourning for a Man, and His Era.” Carr wrote:
Perhaps, in their bones, they are worried that if the king is gone, the kingdom will soon follow.
For decades, American national politics has been the province of a meritocracy, a self-nominated, self-important bunch who choose to be part of the media-political apparatus because it is a bloody sport for very high stakes. And it has historically pivoted around a rather tidy triangle defined by the parlors of Georgetown, the lobbyists on K Street and lunches at The Palm. And once a week, hierarchy is assigned and tribute is paid on the Sunday morning shows, with “Meet the Press†long being the more equal of equals.
You won’t hear this on a Sunday morning show  not this week and not any  but this political season suggests politics don’t work that way any more. As media platforms have multiplied and coverage has become ubiquitous, custody of the political narrative has left the Beltway.
***
Mr. Russert’s colleagues talked Sunday about his competitiveness  how he measured his success by the ability to drive the news cycle. In this election, he became one more aspect in a burgeoning ecosystem, an environment where consumer interest is constantly deciding what the story is and a new species of blogs, social networks and YouTube clips are there to satisfy that interest.
For NBC News, MSNBC — a platform branded with the face of Keith Olbermann — is very much a part of that ecosystem. And Russert led the lights of NBC News into Olbermann’s world, as Peter J. Boyer explains in The New Yorker:
When the late Tim Russert, the Washington bureau chief of NBC News, realized last year that the Democratic Presidential nominating process might become a once-in-a-lifetime political story, he volunteered to become a regular contributor to MSNBC’s broadcasts. Other NBC News stars, such as Brian Williams, the White House correspondent David Gregory, and the chief foreign-affairs correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, followed Russert’s path.
***
As Russert put it to me shortly before his death, “Keith and I have each carved out our roles in this vast information spectrum.†He continued, “What cable emphasizes, more and more, is opinion, or even advocacy. Whether it’s Bill O’Reilly or Keith Olbermann or Lou Dobbs, that’s what that particular platform or venue does. It’s not what I do. What I do is different. I try very, very hard not to come up and say to people, ‘This is what I believe,’ or ‘This is good,’ or ‘This is bad.’ But, rather, ‘This is what I’m learning in my reporting,’ or ‘This is what my analysis shows based on my reporting.’ And as long as I can do that I’m very, very comfortable. And nobody has asked me to do anything but that.â€Â
***
MSNBC’s election coverage is, by default, the political coverage of NBC News. Throughout the protracted Democratic-primary season, after the twenty-two-minute “Nightly News†broadcast went off the air on a big night, NBC’s coverageâ€â€and its news starsâ€â€moved across the studio to MSNBC, where coverage was co-anchored by a broadcaster who makes his personal perspective plainly known. The risk for NBC News is that this commingling has colored the NBC News brand, so carefully burnished over the generations, with the attitudes and predilections of the cable arm.
“Listen, it’s a strain,†says Tom Brokaw, the longtime anchor of “Nightly News,†who remains an active and revered figure at NBC. “And it’s under constant examination. There’s dialogue going on behind the scenes all the time. It’s not perfectly sorted out.â€Â
Brokaw calls this moment in the news media “the second big bang.†“We are creating a new universe, and it has all kinds of new laws and science and physics coming into play as well, in this information world,†he told me. “And you’ve got planets out there colliding with each other, new life forms taking shape; others have drifted too close to the sun, and they’ve burned up. And we don’t know how it’s all going to settle down. And it has, now and forevermore, a radiant effect.â€Â
That second big bang clearly has the more establishment figures at NBC News disoriented as to the shape of things to come. There is no longer a figure like Russert, who at least tried to make the effort to be tough on the Left from time to time. The rest of NBC News is left covering politics in the House That Keith Built.
Perhaps this may strike you as an exaggeration. If the consequences of Russert’s death at the moment of Olbermann’s ascendency are not obvious, consider that there are people speculating that election night 2008 could end with Barack Obama having won the popular vote, but John McCain winning the electoral college vote — similar to the outcome of the 2000 election. Imagine what NBC’s election night coverage in 2000 would have resembled if you subtract Russert and add Olbermann. That worst case scenario may not occur this November, but without active resistance at the highest levels, fear of declining market share in the new media environment will inexorably fuel the Olbermannization of NBC News.
“will inexorably fuel the Olbermannization of NBC News.”
Meet The Moonbats
Should McCain collect the majority of electoral votes but not popular votes, I predict we’ll hear at least 4 years of “selected, not elected”, just as happened with Bush. Given the proclivity of the left to be all sound and fury, there’s not much chance of anything but simply that, if events go in this manner, though.
I would give anything to see Keith Olbermann’s reaction on election night with an Obama lose. I can see it now, a special comment segment excoriating the electorate for putting another Republican in office. Oh, please God please. I’ll even give up my fantasy about Ann Coulter spanking me while watching a loop of Bill Clinton asking what the definition of “is” is!
– Good analysis Karl, but in the end the legacy media will sink or swim on market share. Right now FOX is scoring over 8 times the national audience, nightly, than the combined total of all three major broadcasting networks, and MSNBC isn’t even in the running, so low are its numbers.
– At some some point, and very soon, the Ad revenue is simply going dry up, and then none of the “brave new world” ideas will matter anymore.
– You see the same thing with the NYT, and other Left wing publishing outlets.
– Obvious partisan cheerleading, Op-eds posing as “news” and presented as serious analysis, when in fact its just a mouthpiece for party talking points, all will prove to be an unsaleble commodity when the bottom line sinks enough.
– Even Soros doesn’t have enough millions to bouy the entire political hackery industry.
Great post, spot on with the bigger picture.
I’m tired of looking at fat guys. Olbermann’s jackets are cut funny. Stealth lardo. Tiny head, big sloppy belly.
Russert’s head was shaped like TV. It was the switch to 16:9 that killed him.
Congratulations on getting back on the sauce, Brokaw. I missed you.
Rush is, once again, right.
They’ll have to change the shows name to “Meet The Depressed”.
Well be together
And nobody never
Gonna disconnect us
Or ever separate us
Or say to us you’ve got to
Stop.
Moving Olbermann to NBC and Meet the Press because of his success at MSNBC is just the obvious thing to do.
Oh. *We’ll* be together is what that should say there. The Olbermann, he is ensconced. The only movable piece really is GE divesting. Anyone look at their stock lately?
Jeff Immelt & the GE airhead front office are making Neutron Jack Welch look like George Washington and themselves a bunch of Millard Fillmore wannabes.
Keith O is so despicable ESPN was happy to get that ego out of its offices. Russert had a soft spot between his ears for NY/PA types like KO, Tweety-bird Matthews, & adenoidal Brian W.
Brokaw may go to MTP, as the rest are super-lightweight bum-of-the-month sparring partners with a nanny-state bias.
If Olbermendoucheous is the future of NBC, they are in big trouble.
The fact is, the Press has always been partisan. You have only to look at the treatment the Founders got, or Abraham Lincoln. That worked because there were multiple competing outlets, and because the then-existing ethic required them to include some actual information along with the polemics; that, in turn, worked because it paid its own way, or almost did. Those factors are absent, or nearly so, in the modern “news” industry.
Anything advertiser-supported must of necessity be entertainment, and the Press has reacted to that necessity by concentrating on titillation. “News” must be exciting, must elicit the “wow!” factor that makes people seek it out. As ad space grew at the expense of content, the first thing to go was the dull-as-dishwater information. Moving editorial decisions up the corporate chain exacerbated the effect. Any bean-counter will tell you that you should concentrate on the profitable — in this case, whatever most efficiently attracts eyeballs, i.e., the new and startling — at the expense of overhead.
The trouble with that model is that the viewers and readers it attracts are the ones most affected by sensationalism. People who regard themselves as serious, as possessing the necessary gravitas to be influential, do not read the Star or the Enquirer (although the latter has gone surprisingly straight lately) unless they do so purely for entertainment, with no serious purpose. Mainstream news organizations have tried to find a middle way, and the Sunday morning news-and-interview programs are a big part of that. The daily diet of car crashes and horse races was offset somewhat by attracting serious viewers to Russert, among others.
If they now seize upon Russert’s demise to convert the last bastion of informational news into the same partisan polemic and car-crash concentration the rest of their organizations depend upon, it will signify their abandonment of “journalism” in the sense of conveying information and adoption of the entertainment model across the board. The effect will be to further alienate serious viewers, and one of the attractions of The News has always been that serious viewers paid attention, and non-serious viewers pretended to in order to pretend that they were serious. If decisionmakers no longer watch “the news” that self-congratulatory factor will no longer exist, further eroding the audience down to the core of titillation-seekers, and titillation-seekers are better served by the tabloids and gossippers.
Which is fine by me. I’ve come to despise the bastards anyway.
Regards,
Ric
After all the discussion about fairness in journalism that came when Russert died, MSNBC chose Rachel Maddow to substitute for David Gregory yesterday.
I’ve not always been a fan of Gregory, but his show was the most evenhanded thing going on that network. Putting Maddow in as host made me realize fairness is just not their goal.
MSNBC has become AIR AMERICA TV. Who else would put gasbags like EdSchultz, slanderers of Christians likePapantonio
(he’s behind the Jesus camp agitprop)Rachel Maddow, and expect to get something better than test pattern for ratings. Keith is the best of that crew
of Soros retainers. Yet they still can’t come close to earning their timeslot, except during Rush hour, which is not prime TV advertising time.
If, on the hypothetical, Olbermann takes over MTP, we have at once a perfect filter of the serious (who will not appear on the show) and the unserious (who will appear).
[…] it’s Olbermann, start shorting the stock. I do love the concept of Olberdouche hosting NBC’s election night coverage as the Lamb of […]
I watched Rachel Maddow once on MSNBC during the Obama’s initial Wright crisis. I’ll never watch her voluntarily again. She, Obama, and Olbermann are three people I fumble for the remote to mute. All three make my skin crawl. Forgive me, ladies, but when you go to the slang dictionary to look up the “C” word, her picture is there.
Most of the drive bys gave up any attempt to communicate information long, long ago.
I used to love reading Time magazine in my early twenties, because it gave me sych an “I’m in” feeling. When I was twenty two, I was reading Time one week, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Time wasn’t just giving me news, but it was telling me how to interperet it! That was tghe last time I ever read any of the news maqgazines. 1970! Theyt were already pulling this crap back then.
As for newspapers. What a JOKE! The NYTimes is the most shameless piece of crap ever printed. “Pinchy boy” (and I do mean “boy”) has destroyed the Gray Lady, turning it into a daily bad parody of Mad Magazine.
I wish I had known in the sixties that by 2008 I would be screaming: “Oh my God! What have we wrought?”
I guess be careful what you wish for, because someone will take it and drive it off the cliff….
A Comment on Time, first:
Time stopped being a serious news magazine when they started larding it up with pictures on the inside and hideously bad writing. Further, you knew the content was getting bad when they started putting Post-Modernist artwork on the cover instead of character portraits of Movers and Shakers. The great Time covers, the really memorable ones (and no, I don’t mean the one that said “Is God Dead?”) had the Great Men and Women on them.
MSNBC, like Time, merely stoops to conquer. Think of Olbermann as counterprogramming. They want to build up ratings against O’Reilly, so they pick a fight with FOX.
However, slowly but surely, it identifies MSNBC and the larger NBC brand as a partisan one. This cannot be good for them.
Well said, Karl. And well cited. Advocacy journalism is here. Tom Brokaw nails it. I find all this pretty troubling.
Unfortunately, like gravity, you can’t change the basic laws of physics of journalism, and where I do disagree with Brokaw is that we are not looking at a new creation but a new degradation.
@ Rick: Agree with most of what your comment except that sensationalism has always been a factor and always will be. What Russert did, in a just barely basic way, was practice fair journalism. That is where the viewer gets a better grasp of the picture.
As per Lost Dog on Time mag, I got the feeling at times with Russert that I got a fuller picture. (Which is why when he slipped up — which was more often in the last several years — it was so apparent that he was slipping up.
What Russert and others like him did was provide an oasis of news away from the stinking pond that is tabloid story-telling. Cause it ain’t journalism, it’s story-telling.
Getting openly involved in the story is the advocacy journalism that I understand the new journalists want to be. Which is old news (cites provided on demand…). Journalists are openly saying that they now want to be part of the story.
And, no, there is a difference between being covertly partisan and openly partisan. Covert partisan is dishonest but it had some boundaries at least. The new idea is to turn the process inside out. Before I had a small amount of trust in the facts being laid down first, even in a limited way, then I got the spin tacked on. Not now.
The line that is blurred in a simple old one. And it has always been the driving force of journalism: What’s fact and what’s opinion or interpretation. When you cut completely loose from the critical evaluation and detachment that is necessary for good journalism, then the game’s over.
Frankly, I miss Bob Edwards from NPR and some of the other really good questioners of the past — mostly on radio.
Where we are going from here is really messy. Obama is right in the middle this and, in my view, he’s riding the worser aspects of this new naive journalism. AP’s new policies (which are absurd from any angle) are another step toward a new journalism.
But, hey, good journalism is still the same old game and it’s not going to change. Good journalism is still good reporting and questioning. My conclusion on the breathlessness over Russert’s passing is that it is just a gasp by the media at how badly the rest of the field is right now, now that it’s one legitimate player is gone. Like Michael Jordan, or Bird, or Magic leaving the NBA and the NBA gasping to find a Koby Bryant or that player in Cleveland (I know his name) to take their places. It just ain’t the same. They’re not as good.
To attack on its own merits what the media calls new journalism therefore is just silly. To attack it on it’s lack of real journalistic skills, that’s still the weak spot to hit.
Replace Tim Russert with Keith Olbermann
Then we can replace
Mahatma Ghandi with Osama Bin Laden
Yeah
It is just as stupid as Olbermann on Meet the Press,
MSNBC will have to rename Meet the Press to,
Meet the Miss-information of our self serving misguided douche bag
I don’t trust any man who uses more make up than all my former girlfriends combined
Olbermann is everything that is not journalism and everything that is wrong with journalism and news media anchors. No one could be a bigger news anchor failure, and what is the deal with Olbermanns Bill Oreilly fetish?
What happened Keith ?
Did Bill Oreilly bring you to the news media Prom and then dumped you at the dance for real journalism
Keith, try keeping your personal imaginary world of politics to yourself and report the news, the real news, instead of the doing what all those voices in your head tell you to do.
Forex Day Trading is the American Way. Great Post!
this is a comment.