In a time when increasing numbers of people are tuning out the nightly news and media consumption is falling,
the late-night comedians have become some of the most important newscasters in the country. From Cronkite to Colbert
explains why. It examines an historical path that begins at the height of the network age with Walter Cronkite
and Edward R. Murrow, when the evening news was considered the authoritative record of the day s events and forged
our assumptions about what the news is, or should be. The book then winds its way through the breakdown of that
paradigm of real news and into its reinvention in the unlikely form of such popularized shows as The Daily Show
and The Colbert Report. From Cronkite to Colbert makes the case that rather than fake news, those shows should
be understood as a new kind of journalism, one that has the potential to save the news and reinvigorate the conversation
of democracy in today s society.