This guy is even worse that Aaron Brown! As far as keeping them honest with regard to New Orleans, his dumb show has been glued to the JonBenet story since it broke and the anniversary of Katrina is almost on us. Maybe he will give it a few minutes near the end of his JonBenet segment that evening? Goddamn Karl Rove is behind this whole Jonebenet thing, I can smell it!!

You describe his admittedly unorthodox experience, but then decry his lack of experience as an "anchor" as an actual drawback? Whatever. Someone from the outside was needed to report what was actually going on with Katrina. The current roster of hacks certainly wasn't up for it. So what if Hollywood likes him? They can't all be wizened Ken Doll types. He happens to be cute, but don't let that diminish the fact that he was there when few others were doing what newsmen should.

OK, I'm a sucker, but I personally felt time stop when I heard Anderson Cooper interviewing Mary Landrieu that day during the aftermath of Katrina. That was AC's entire career. I usually see a kind of empty pretty-boy quality to him--the vapid gaze, the I'm-a-big-boy-forced-gravitas, the fawning over celebs and (as Kathy Griffin said "the Prada suits.")

While I don't think Ms. Landrieu was the most important Katrina player to go after, I will never forget that moment when he blasted her. I think the public is truly hungry for some semblence of spontaneous truth seeking like that. In fact, I'm convinced that that's how AC became famous--from those few questions. It was a profound experience for me and I'm as cynical as they come about empty, corporate news. I don't like any of those teleprompted dummies and I don't like anything AC has done before or after, but that moment was important to me and I thought that TV News had had a major shifting of the paradigm. It's one thing for James Carville to come on and blast his conservative counterparts in an air conditioned studio as TV's favorite crazy uncle, it was another for CNN's bland boy to try his hand at a confrontation that seemed borne of genuine frustration and compassion.

I had sat with my jaw dropped for a week watching Katrina unfold. I was ashamed and stunned. That one moment was a kind of clearing of the bullsh*t and I thought it might Lead To Something, and it did: AC's shiny new career. Oh well. He was reigned in at last but for a few minutes (and a few days thereafter) I thought CNN would keep the rage going and maybe get some real rage churned up for Iraq and the carnival of lies from this administration.

Come on---"anchors" are glorified newsreaders anyway, nobody ever expects insight or meaning from them, and FWIW Cooper is not a lying bag of MERDE like Dan Rather, who sold the "Oswald-Shot-JFK" crock of shit to the nation to advance his career. And yes, Anderson's gay---like WOW. Not.

I think what news execs seem to be missing, at least as characterized in this article, is that people (especially twentysomthings) still care about the news, they just don't get it from the TV as often. More and more, the "old media" is giving way to internet news outlets, causing the drop in ratings.

Why are newsanchors no longer "rung-by-rung" types? The people who might care about credibility aren't watching.

I have a friend who recently lamented that reality shows and increasingly shallow news coverage indicate that our country is getting dumber. Why else would they watch? But no one's really getting dumber. Rather, the smartest amongst us are starting to turn off the idiot box.

I remember AC from those Channel One days, and I cannot seem to be able to really take him seriously. Same with Lisa Ling.

That's what you get for going to high school in the early 1990s.

But, Neal, you also complain that the way the old-style anchors worked was wrong because it had a pro-corporate, center-right bias that catered to the bosses in the executive suite. So if they're bad, and having a news anchor who comes from outside that "tradition" is bad, then what is your prescription for good news reading? It shouldn't matter much anyway, since Anderson Cooper is watched by only 1 in 300 Americans, 0.33%, which is hardly changing the world. (Incidentally, that's why Cronkite's emotions were sered in the nation's psyche--almost 1 in 3 Americans were watching him, something today's mini-anchors can't do.)

Did someone bury this column somewhere for 3 months, suddenly realize they had it and dust it off? The whole Anderson Cooper issue is months old, as is his book, as is the JUNE cover story in Vanity Fair.

And, frankly, nothing in this column tells us anything new. Is this the Salon equivalent of a Larry King interview?

"My job isn't telling people what happened. It's getting them to understand why they should care."

For the record, Merriam-Webster says an anchor is "a broadcaster (as on a news program) who introduces reports by other broadcasters and usually reads the news."

Furthermore, news is, by definition, something we care about. If you have to dress it up and explain why it's news, then guess what? It ain't news.

I get the majority of my news on-line. And I have no idea what color Sydney Blumenthal's eyes are.

"Cooper's back story -- all stars have a back story -- is that he is the son of the heir to the Vanderbilt fortune and the former jeans maven, Gloria Vanderbilt, and of a handsome quondam actor and screenwriter named Wyatt Cooper."

Who uses the word quondam?

I'm really tired of this "young people are stupid and don't care about the news" narrative. get a clue. plenty of young people care about the news, we just don't sit down every night at a designated time and wait for someone to spoon-feed it to us. millions and millions of people read news on the internet, and I bet most of them are young. industry wonks who claim the problem is with the consumers just illustrate how out of touch they are.

the demand for news is still there, just not like you want to give it to us. change your business model, stupid. and besides that, answer me honestly, can you really take seriously anyone who says, "yes, I'm well informed. I regularly watch the news on television."

ok grandpa. time for bed.