• National Journal, Tuesday, April 11, 2006 11:45 AM

Reading everything you can about media (including the daily "Around the Net in Media") and feeling depressed about the industry? Bummed about what's happened to newspapers? Angry about the garbage that's on commercial television? P.O.'d that everything of legitimate importance gets demoted to the level of gossip by the time it reaches consumers? Well, then, read William Powers' latest column, which takes a completely contrarian point of view. Powers acknowledges that the situation is far from ideal, but that the bad news about media in the U.S. has been vastly overblown and that the good news is hardly ever acknowledged. "I want to propose that The Media Kvetch is wrong," Powers says. "Not a little wrong or occasionally wrong, but absolutely blind to reality -- and kind of crazy. And we should send [him] packing. Contrary to popular belief, this era may be a kind of high-water mark in the evolution of media, precisely because of all the flux." He offers brief, upbeat assessments of newspapers and TV, and concludes, as if to put a thick punctuation mark on his thesis, that the arrival of Katie Couric on CBS News' prime-time air is decidedly a good thing. Her credentials, he says, are exactly what's needed for this era.

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