• by dave.b , Max Kalehoff , July 7, 2006

I've been catching up on the past few episodes of CNN Reliable Sources with Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, the weekly television show about the media. PBS News Hour host Jim Lehrer made some interesting points about television and the news business in an interview with Kurtz, which aired June 18:

KURTZ: The anchor wars. We got Katie Couric going to the ABC News. Charlie Gibson just took over ABC's World News Tonight and yet the critics out there say, have said for years, a half-hour newscast at 6:30 in an age when people have a hundred different ways to get information is kind of an anachronism. What do you think?

LEHRER: It's nonsense. In fact, the need and the growth of the nightly newscast, I think is growing right before our very eyes, while the critics are saying just the opposite because what's happened, this proliferation of information, proliferation of access to information, there's increasing evidence of people saying, wait a minute now, I haven't got time to sort through--I don't have--I work for a living. I go to school. I want to go fishing. I want to do other things. I don't want to sit in front, watch my cable TV network all day or in even in front of a computer screen.

KURTZ: Journalists are sitting there looking at Web sites and blogs.

LEHRER: Absolutely, but we do that for them and they want us, they want people they can trust to do that for them. In other words, the old-fashioned role of the gatekeeper is going to return in a major way and it's already beginning to return as long as we do not get out of the journalism business. In other words, as long as we stay in the reporting business, we will always have a function and we will always be a growth industry...

Maybe I'm getting old and too busy trying to balance my career and family, but I actually agree with Lehrer to some extent. Yes, the need for Lehrer's"PBS News Hour" nightly newscast is growing before our very eyes, but not because there are hundreds or even thousands of news and information choices. Rather, because "News Hour" tends to offer rare, thoughtful analysis. The need for big nightly newscasts--especially from the big network and cable networks--is not growing, because they tend to be hollow, sensational and filled with commercial interruptions. Most of the time, they're not even worth skimming over with TiVo.

As for blogs and gatekeepers, Jim has it both right and wrong: the need for trusted gatekeepers will experience a renaissance, but not in a rigid model where professional news editors necessarily filter blogs, news Web sites and any other prolific information source.

The fact is that every day I turn to certain individual bloggers to play the role of trusted gatekeeper, just as I turn to Jim Lehrer and his "News Hour" as a gatekeeper. In fact, I have a number of news and information gatekeepers that I trust; some of them happen to be in the news media, some in the blogosphere, and many elsewhere. Some of them are in my own workplace, my gym, my doctor's office, my home and favorite local bar.

"Trusted gatekeeper" doesn't necessarily translate to professional anything. Trusted gatekeeper translates to whom I trust. Period. It's not about the medium or format, but it is all about the person, the source and the reputation.

In an age when news organizations are struggling to regain public trust, do you even consider them your trusted gatekeepers anymore? Perhaps you do, but I bet much less so versus just a few years ago.

Long live Jim Lehrer, who is one of the few professional news gatekeepers I still trust!