"Mike Wallace: Newsman's death symbolizes passing of an era"

Today, iconic newsman Mike Wallace passed away.  He gained fame on the weekly television news magazine "60 Minutes" and was widely known as a tenacious investigative journalist.  Admittedly, I rarely watched "60 Minutes", but I do appreciate journalists asking tough questions about serious topics.

Mike Wallace, 1918 - 2012

This LA Times article on Mr. Wallace's career touches upon the theme of this blog; the manner in which society consumes news is changing.  So I thought I'd share the following excerpt:

"The durability of "60 Minutes" proves that viewers continue to have an appetite for hard-hitting newscasts. The program still thrives in an era when the format that inspired it -- the once-a-week newsmagazine -- has lost relevance with the immediacy of the Internet.

Across America, newsroom leaders are struggling to redefine their magazines, newspapers and local TV and radio newscasts. They are doing so amid dramatically shrinking resources and the reality that readers and viewers probably already saw or heard a snippet of the news elsewhere.  Meanwhile, the lure of celebrity news, which drives ratings and Internet traffic, has become an irresistible urge for many in the news business."

The importance of the newsman has greatly diminished because people no longer rely on him or her to get the news.  Since the advent of the internet, people get news immediately and do not have to wait for the morning paper, the nightly news, or a weekly news show.


This fact is supported by a Pew Research Center poll  released in 2011.  It found that 66% of Americans still use television as their main source of news, however, that number is down from 74% only three years ago.


While internet is catching up to television across the population as a whole, internet has easily surpassed television as the main source of news amongst Americans who are between the ages of 18-29.  As of this poll, 65% of 18-29 year olds said they get most of their news from the internet, whereas 52% get their news from television.  In 2006, when I graduated college those numbers were 32% from the internet and 62% from television.


The internet is an incredibly large space with a world's worth of news.  Some webpages are legitimate and trustworthy and others are filled with false and useless junk.  The implications of this aggressive trend towards internet-based news depends on where people go for their information.  However, regardless of what websites people visit to get their news, one thing is clear: when Mike Wallace passed, so did an era.