It's Not Easy Being Gwen Ifill, Or Thoughts On The Media - Local and National

A recent NY Times article on Judy Woodward, and how she is handling the PBS NewsHour after the death of her longtime  co-host Gwen Ifill, reminded me of just how good Gwen was, and how well those two worked together.

 

PBS has launched the obligatory “nationwide search” for her replacement, who might even be (horrors!) a man, but no answers so far...and so Judy soldiers on.

 

Several men on the staff have received expanded roles; some have done well, some haven’t.

 

This past week, with Judy off and MAJOR news breaking, John Yang struggled in the anchor role and didn’t do well—possibly the failure of his producer. 2 examples: shortly after the latest (but not the last) Trump catastrophe broke, Yang asked an obscure senator what he thought...but the senator hadn’t heard the news and wisely said he couldn’t comment. (Mark that man down as a comer!) Later Yang mispronounced the name of a guest, a Washington Post reporter (what would public tv’s top newsprogram do without newspaper reporters???) Granted, the guy had a 4 syllable name, but that’s hardly an excuse.

 

CBS had a top reporter in Iran for its important Presidential elections. As I heard it, she said the contest would come down to between “a populist and the incumbent.”  No; the incumbent was the populist and was staving off a hardline conservative....and thankfully, he won

 

When news breaks on weekends...and it often does...I have said before the major networks' weekend anchors are often NOT up to the job. If this is where they break-in future weekday anchors, we are in trouble.

 

Turning locally, and some good news...on Wednesdays the Fox 10pm news highlights  “Spirit of the BlueGrass.” These feature reports by Marvin Bartlett have been excellent...and should remind all the other Lexington stations, especially Channel 27, why each needs their own “local Charles Kuralt”

 

And then there was the 11pm sports segment last Saturday, which after giving us a detailed report on the Transy women's softball game—as the 3rd story, went to a break, and returned with the story of an upset horse race victory, some small race called The Preakness, which merely ended, for another year, all hopes for a Triple Crown winner.

 

Ah so, judgments, judgments.

 

I'm just sayin'..