I remember in 2013 when Brian Stelter had taken over CNN’s Reliable Sources, a media affairs program that had been on CNN’s air for two decades. When Howie Kurtz left to go to FNC earlier in 2013; the network had tried different people to fill in, one was a long CNN guy (Frank Sesno IIRC), another dude and Brian Stelter, a man who is only less than two years older than I am. In the early teens to see a Millennial replace a Boomer, was interesting to see in retrospect, but what I fear is that many Millennials have grown up in toxic times, but sadly these people did not consume the media in the same way your’s truly did.

“Generalists make good journalists” ~ @MinifigNewsguy

With Stelter taking over the reigns of Reliable, it became over time trashing Fox News Channel on a weekly basis, often the lead, sometimes it was legit, sometimes it was childish. Not to mention CNN’s internal drama was never covered, but at the same time media criticism took a back road, and while Media Buzz was the better program, the ghost of Fox News Channel’s past would haunt, and the wild fox would disease not only Media Buzz, but Kurtz became a rabid attack dog on the competition and promises to critique FNC was just a false promise.

This posting was not to talk about Brian, CNN or Reliable, but the overall generation that sometimes gets mistaken as the “MTV Generation”, people born after 1982 and prior to 1996. The millennials consumed media during the time when all the networks had been more overt to their prejudices. You got the tight righties like Tomi Lahren to Lauren Chen and Ben Shapiro and many more (in reality there is more conservative millennials on TV than you want to believe) then you got lefties like Brian, and a whole slew as well. As much as I do not want to single people like Yamiche Alcindor; she maybe a good person as a journalist, she’s extremely tilted (she can’t even control herself that the former president had negative racial bias.) Then you got people who have never went to journalism school and not getting any on the job training, and they can run away writing the worst copy, without any editorial controls.  Or people who worked in campaigns not even an election ago as well.

The problem is it’s fanboy/ fangirl journalism we are in. It’s just like how people are obsessed with Macs or Androids, it’s a thing I call allaboutism, meaning all you care about is one thing. I thought tight right conservatives were one issue types, and obsessed like a wild animal, but I am seeing this on the so called “progressives”.

We have a generation of people who are working in the industry that can’t tell film from broadcast apart. YouTube went away with the Broadcast Yourself tagline, to “children” that are in their mid 30s in environments they should be shunned.

What will happen when the Boomers go away? There’s only 50 to 70 million American GenXers (this the infamous “Karen” generation, and there is so many conservative type of GenXers than moderate liberals; meaning the GenXers will likely be panelists on a FNC or Fox Nation (do not write off the success of Fox Nation, even if it’s hardly “news”.)  The rest will be my generation and Generation Z the people born after 1995 to the mid 2010s. Generation Z is just aloof to media like the Millennials. How many boys and girls from the late 90s to 2016, did anyone aspire to be in a news environment in the height of radio, TV and print combined? How many people want to not livei in the past, but live on the spirit of news media from 20something years ago? Why do we settle with partisan politics? Why are self-identified “journalists” getting away with unedited writing with creative-writing, like comparing self-pleasure to “mass murder [sic]”?

Why can journalists just cover the events, show some empathy when it merits and cover things that are outside their bubble? Beat reporting was severely abused in the era of partisan politics and the beat reporters are higher paid activists… and before you think I am referring to MSNBC or CNN, FNC is notorious for it too!

I am just ashamed to be a millennial seeing the news world change for the worse and I don’t see any course-correction any time soon. Expect more trash, and more tilted “reporting” to continue to populate your screen; and if there is a disaster or other major events, there may be a day you may not be able to be informed because our country settled for politics, and one-issue topics, and resulting in the lack of generalists because those people make good journalists.

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