Certainly, Walton and company will be happy if, in another 25
years, magazines are covering
CNN's 50th anniversary, and its
rivalry with Fox is just a blip on the charts, its one U.S. network
a drop in the global multimedia bucket that CNN has become.
Correspondent Christiane Amanpour, however, puts the present and
the future into perspective with a dip into the past: "There's been
a proliferation of news sources, other 24-hour news channels, the
Internet, everything else. However, CNN and
Ted Turner created the
communications revolution we're talking about. Everyone else has
followed us."
Indeed, it's hard to imagine people checking their favorite
websites for news without imagining CNN first. If, as Wolf Blitzer
claims, CNN hadn't trained the world to look for news whenever they
want it, we might all still be watching the network newscasts from
the blow-dried/makeup/pretty-hair anchor du jour. And what kind of
world would that be?
3) anderson cooper
you started out reporting from the field. was it hard to adjust
to being an anchor?
anchoring is a lot more compelling than i thought it was going to
be; it's a different kind of challenge every day. it's like running
along the edge of a cliff, or running on a sand dune that's
collapsing underneath you as you go. it's easy to fall off, to make
mistakes, but if you can keep moving forward, it's
invigorating.
do you think part of your job is to appeal to younger
viewers?
i've never been in a meeting where people said to bring in younger
people. i think the notion of telling stories differently to appeal
to younger people is a mistake. young people want the same kind of
thing older viewers do: interesting, well-told, compelling stories.
if you're somehow altering what you're doing because you want to
get young viewers, that's a little bit like when your parents go
out to buy "cool" clothes for you.