PressEthic

Or so a September 12th NY Times profile says. His spat with Mary Landrieu has not only garnered him boatloads of cred among bloggers (wonkette.com said “Anderson Cooper shows what happens when [you] take away a man's Kiehl's for a week: [His] skin gets dry but the scales fall from his eyes.”), it apparently launched his popularity into the stratosphere: if you type “Anderson Cooper” into Google, the fourth link to pop up is crooksandliars.com, which posted the spat between he and Landrieu. According to the Times piece, CNN also gave him an additional two hour slot, calling him the “anti-anchor” and the “anchorperson of the future.”

The anchorperson of the future?

Beyond being a case of CNN riding out the success of one of its star reporters, I’m curious what implications such a shift would have on the future of broadcast journalism. Klein is saying that, at some point down the road, the Kent Brockmans of the broadcast world will be obsolete, done in by persona-less, take-no-guff do-gooders. Plausible future or wishful thinking? I tend to think the latter.