The death of Ed Asner last week at age 91 prompted TV stations to resurrect clips of the actor’s most memorable role: Lou Grant, the crusty news editor on the Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970 to 1977 and the Lou Grant show from 1977 to 1982.
The archetype of the tough but nurturing editor resonated with the American public because it was true. Everybody who worked in journalism in the middle of the Twentieth Century probably had an editor a little like Lou Grant.
For me it was a Chicago newspaper editor who taught journalism classes part-time at Northwestern University. His classes were a boot camp in which any deviation from accuracy and clarity was met with stinging criticism. A few of the women in the class were reduced to tears, which probably would get him fired today.
The Chicago City News Bureau, a legendary training ground for reporters, had a sign in its newsroom that read: “IF YOUR MOTHER SAYS SHE LOVES YOU, CHECK IT OUT.”
During my public relations career it was challenging (and fun) to match wits with reporters who drilled relentlessly for verifiable facts. And when I supervised my company’s employee publications I let my writers and editors know that Lou Grant was my favorite TV show.
Demanding editors guided journalism’s climb from the disrepute of Yellow Journalism to respectability by mid-century. They tempered the crusading passion of young reporters by insisting on scrupulous fact-checking and unimpeachable sources, as Ben Bradlee did with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the Washington Post’s Watergate coverage. By the 1970s around 70% of Americans trusted the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.
Times have changed. Today’s editors are at the mercy of their reporters and their job security is at an all-time low. Editors are losing their jobs over a politically incorrect remark, an unsubstantiated allegation, or for publishing an op-ed by a member of the opposition party. Any editor who acted like Lou Grant (or my journalism professor) would be canceled immediately.
Objective reporting has been replaced by political advocacy that’s more like the Nineteenth Century than the Twentieth. There are many reasons for this, but the result is that the news media now play the same rabble-rousing role in today’s public discourse that they did in the Spanish-American War. Editorial guardrails and enforcement of standards have no place in this environment.
It’s no surprise that the percentage of Americans who trust the news media has fallen from 70% to 40% with a sharp division along party lines. Because business now has more credibility than the news media, public relations professionals are shifting from traditional press-agentry to podcasts, social media and other alternatives to get their message out.
Solid journalism still exists but readers have to look beyond newspapers and TV networks to find it. Seasoned journalists like Glenn Greenwald are publishing on their own via digital platforms such as Substack. Nonprofit newsrooms and digital media have taken over much of the investigative reporting the traditional news media used to do. I’ll bet some of them have editors.
Lou Grant is dead
The death of Ed Asner last week at age 91 prompted TV stations to resurrect clips of the actor’s most memorable role: Lou Grant, the crusty news editor on the Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970 to 1977 and the Lou Grant show from 1977 to 1982.
The archetype of the tough but nurturing editor resonated with the American public because it was true. Everybody who worked in journalism in the middle of the Twentieth Century probably had an editor a little like Lou Grant.
For me it was a Chicago newspaper editor who taught journalism classes part-time at Northwestern University. His classes were a boot camp in which any deviation from accuracy and clarity was met with stinging criticism. A few of the women in the class were reduced to tears, which probably would get him fired today.
The Chicago City News Bureau, a legendary training ground for reporters, had a sign in its newsroom that read: “IF YOUR MOTHER SAYS SHE LOVES YOU, CHECK IT OUT.”
During my public relations career it was challenging (and fun) to match wits with reporters who drilled relentlessly for verifiable facts. And when I supervised my company’s employee publications I let my writers and editors know that Lou Grant was my favorite TV show.
Demanding editors guided journalism’s climb from the disrepute of Yellow Journalism to respectability by mid-century. They tempered the crusading passion of young reporters by insisting on scrupulous fact-checking and unimpeachable sources, as Ben Bradlee did with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the Washington Post’s Watergate coverage. By the 1970s around 70% of Americans trusted the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.
Times have changed. Today’s editors are at the mercy of their reporters and their job security is at an all-time low. Editors are losing their jobs over a politically incorrect remark, an unsubstantiated allegation, or for publishing an op-ed by a member of the opposition party. Any editor who acted like Lou Grant (or my journalism professor) would be canceled immediately.
Objective reporting has been replaced by political advocacy that’s more like the Nineteenth Century than the Twentieth. There are many reasons for this, but the result is that the news media now play the same rabble-rousing role in today’s public discourse that they did in the Spanish-American War. Editorial guardrails and enforcement of standards have no place in this environment.
It’s no surprise that the percentage of Americans who trust the news media has fallen from 70% to 40% with a sharp division along party lines. Because business now has more credibility than the news media, public relations professionals are shifting from traditional press-agentry to podcasts, social media and other alternatives to get their message out.
Solid journalism still exists but readers have to look beyond newspapers and TV networks to find it. Seasoned journalists like Glenn Greenwald are publishing on their own via digital platforms such as Substack. Nonprofit newsrooms and digital media have taken over much of the investigative reporting the traditional news media used to do. I’ll bet some of them have editors.
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