Bob CollinsBefore he leaves “The Daily Show” for good, Jon Stewart could have a field day with the bead-clutching that’s taking place in the hours since he announced he’s leaving the program.
“What Walter Cronkite was to an earlier generation, Stewart is to Millennials,” the Boston Globe’s critic writes today.
The assessment ignores the differences in how we consume and what we expect from “news.”
More than anything else, we want to be entertained by it.
While Twitter was lighting up last evening with the Stewart (and Brian Williams) news, this incredible story was airing among relative disinterest on PBS NewsHour.
The hundreds of girls missing in the mass kidnapping by Boko Haram are still missing. Only now, months after the world’s outrage mobilized today’s generation of news watchers to action — creating a hashtag on Twitter — nobody gives a damn.
It’s hard to make the mass kidnapping of women funny.
“Jon Stewart’s departure is a loss to real news,” the Associated Press writes today. As if that’s what we’re interested in.
