news – Now I've Heard Everything

Breaking news … this just in … a major new development….

Did I catch your attention? Perhaps. But how do you know I have anything of substance to say, or am I just bloviating?

In fact it is getting harder and harder to distinguish between what is real, substantive news and what is just some guy commenting on the latest rumor from a webcam in his mom’s basement.

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New York Times Magazine editor Bill Wasik identified this phenomenon 16 years ago in his book called And Then There’s This.

And back in 2009 Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were all still pretty young. Tik Tok had not emerged, and podcasts were relatively new. So the phenomenon Wasik described has simply gotten bigger

He and I met one afternoon in the summer of 2009 to talk about his book. So here now, from 2009, Bill Wasik.

Tomorrow, August 20, is National Radio Day, the annual commemoration of the contributions the radio industry has made.

Commercial radio has actually been around for more than 100 years, and, as you might expect, has changed and evolved rather dramatically.

Radio in its infancy was a novelty, and it took years for the medium to begin realizing its full potential as an essential part of American life.

A young boy growing up in the early 20th century was among those we would now call “early adopters” – and he went on to a broadcasting career in which he helped shape what we now know as broadcast 5 news.

Like so many radio journalists of the time, Ed Bliss was a newspaper reporter for several years before landing a job, almost by chance, at CBS radio in 1943.

For the next 25 years Bliss wrote for and produced Edward R. Murrow, and later, Walter Cronkite.

After leaving CBS in 1968 Bliss founded the broadcast journalism program at American University.

And in 1991 Bliss wrote a history of broadcast journalism in America, a book called Now The News.

That’s when I have the chance to spend a few minutes with this legend in my chosen profession.

So here now, from 1991, Ed Bliss.

Ed Bliss died in 2002. He was 90.