The bloodletting at Nexstar, gutting anchors and reporters at WGN and KTLA, is not a shock. It is a symptom. The patient has been terminal for years.
There was a time when you could switch on the evening news and actually learn something. Facts. Context. Accountability. Now you get sermons. Viewers are no longer informed. They are managed. Spoon-fed political orthodoxy and campaign messaging dressed up as journalism. Subtle as a brick through a window.
TV news did not die in a blaze of glory. It suffocated in a cloud of hairspray, banter, and manufactured charm. Personality replaced substance. Chit-chat replaced journalism. The audience noticed. They left. They fled to podcasters and bloggers who, flaws and all, at least pretend to chase facts instead of cocktail party approval.
News breaks on weekends. News happens on holidays. But if you rely on local TV, you wait until Monday, when the hair is perfect and the teleprompter is warm.
Two anchors per broadcast, grinning at each other like cruise ship hosts, while real reporting starves in the field. Somewhere, Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave fast enough to power a turbine. Field reporters used to hunt corruption. Now they stand in front of yellow tape, recite what everyone already knows, and harvest the obligatory neighbor who gasps, “This never happens in our neighborhood. This is absolutely scary”.
The weekend circus at KTLA may be the low point. It feels less like a newsroom and more like open mic night. If satire paid municipal pensions, they would be legends. Instead of digging into court files, following high profile cases, and telling viewers what actually happened after the arrest, they giggle through pop culture and call it content.
Follow up reporting is nearly extinct. Investigative journalism in Los Angeles is a fossil. Scandals are not uncovered. They are summarized only after handcuffs click. Once upon a time, reporters exposed corruption before indictments. Now “ investigative” reporters like one at KNBC read newsmakerpress releases and calls it his exclusive report.
If this is the future, the layoffs are not the tragedy. They are the forecast. Soon the stations will run reruns of old cop shows and spare us the pretense. At least the fiction was honest about being fiction.
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