BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

November 23, 2004

Rather's apologist

: Michael Wolff just said on MSNBC that Dan Rather will be remembered as a "seminal figure" in the history of network news and not for this story that he blew.

He's alone in that. Everywhere I've turned on the dial tonight, the accepted view is that Rather is going because he blew it.

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Bye, bye, Dan

: Dan Rather is stepping down from his pedestal in March. Yes, bloggers deserve some credit....

The dinosaur of news just keeled over. This marks the end not of any golden age but of pompous, stand-apart news. They don't know it yet, but it does.

(I was blogging this from a TV news greenroom, where I was doing something unrelated. That, by the way, was how this entry and the one below got messed up; my Treo ate them. Anyway, there was much buzz among the TV news folks, but little surprise.)

Howard Kurtz appeared on CNN and said that Rather left now -- before the release of the Rathergate report -- so he could leave on his own terms. That is to say, the report is not going to be a valentine.

I wish CBS would have the balls to try something new, to break out of the pack, to blow up the obvious, to reinvent what TV news should be. They won't, of course. But we can try to tell them how they should do it. What would you do with CBS news if you had to fill that chair? Leave comments.

: Here's RatherBiased.com's statement.

Frankly, it's a shame that it has to end this way for Dan. In the end, he became the person he most despised, Richard Nixon. Had Rather and the CBS management been more serious about viewer input and fairness, they would never have had to stonewall about a story they shouldn't have run.

And Powerlineblog's here.

What should happen but won't I

: They should recognize what's happening in news and hire Jon Stewart or David Letterman or anyone with attitude -- not haughty Rather attitude, but the attitude of the audience, the voice and scowl of the people, the honest voice of the comedian who pokes holes in pomposity rather than pumping it up. It should happen but won't.

: Jay Rosen on Rather's farewell.

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The Vanity Fair party

: I've been remiss not linking to Vanity Fair's new site.

I took some crap here because Vanity Fair was not online; it wasn't my fault, really, but because I get to hang out in the Conde cafeteria, I had to accept some level of blame. So I'm glad to see that they are finally up and the site is very nicely done. James Wolcott beat them to the punch with his blog. But now the magazine has content from print as well as a banquet of links, including many to bloggers.

The Independent in London writes a happy review of the site, glad to finally be able to read some of VF over there.

There's a party going on in cyberspace. It's a classy affair, with A-list celebrities, wise, old coves, rapier wits and blindingly bright members of the intelligentsia. It should be a damned good party, because it's been a long time coming. Several years after most magazines dipped their toe in the water by launching online editions, one of Condé Nast's flagship titles has just entered the fray with vanityfair.com....

Aside from the cocktails and celebrity element, there's an earnest desire to stimulate intelligent conversation, just like at a high-society party.

Congrats to my colleagues.

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Goober of the year

: Renée Graham of the Boston Globe nominates Michael Powell to be Time's man of the year sinc he has done so much -- of damage -- in 2004.

From driving Howard Stern to announce a 2006 move to satellite radio to making ABC affiliates so skittish about airing a film with graphic violence and profanity that more than a third canceled a Veterans Day airing of ''Saving Private Ryan," no individual this year has had a greater effect on our cultural lives -- for good or ill, for better or worse -- than Powell....

In Iowa and Nebraska, instead of Spielberg's World War II epic, several ABC affiliates showed the TV movie ''Return to Mayberry." Somehow, the selection of that film hardly seems a coincidence. It could certainly serve as a sad commentary on the archaic mind-set the FCC's restrictive rules is promoting, with Powell as an overbearing Barney Fife with too much power and too little desire to use it beyond fostering his own myopic cultural and political agenda.

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All New York's a stage

: Yesterday, I'm walking through Times Square by the office and I see some folks staring up Broadway at a flatbed truck surrounded by a few cops and camera trucks. The truck passes. Oh, Bono is playing. Shrug. Another day in the center of the universe.

: The other day, I'm walking through Rockefeller Center and I see a squad of burly guys in hard hats trying to look still-macho as they climb up the Christmas tree with bundles of lights. It's beginning to look a lot....

: This morning, I'm walking to work from the PATH by Macy's and I see that they're ready for the Thanksgiving Day parade. The street is painted with the logo and here's the majorette's-eye view of the cameras.

All New York's a stage and all its people merely extras.

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Vlogging

: Audioblog.com has a very neat video blogging tool and Eric Rice is having fun with it.

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