NPR
For decades, young reporters would ask themselves, “What would Walter think?” Nowadays, it’s not the memory of Walter Cronkite or even Edward R. Murrow that motivates some reporters –it’s more often the fear that the stories they put out today might get picked apart by Jon Stewart tomorrow.
Prominent among the wary: NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who recently explained in a magazine essay that The Daily Show host “has gone from optional to indispensable” in just a few short years.
And Williams tells NPR’s Guy Raz that on occasion, when he feels his broadcast tap-dancing toward the precipice–tossing around a story idea for “what I call Margaret Mead journalism –where we ‘discover Twitter,’ ” for instance, or entertaining some other unfortunate editorial possibility –“I will, and have, said that, ‘You know, maybe we can just give a heads-up to Jon to set aside some time for that tonight.’ More…