New Faces

I talked to a reporter today who's writing about the turnover on the Sunday shows, particularly David Gregory getting the nod to take over for the late Tim Russert as the host of Meet the Press and John King taking over the CNN show. One thing that struck me though is how skewed people's thinking seems to have gotten about relative age. David Gregory is seen as very young for the job, like a kid. But he's 38. That's not really *that* young. I was asked for comment, I think, because I'm one of the young people too, etc. But I'm about to turn 40. King, the reporter told me, is 44.

Some interesting perspective. Walter Cronkite was pushed into retirement when he was, I believe, 64. Wolf Blitzer is 60.

To a degree, this is simply a matter of people living longer and society becoming less rigid about forcing people out when they reach an arbitrary age, which is all to the good. But aside from all the other kinds of diversity that are important on the Sunday shows, some breadth of age diversity is needed as well.

(ed.note: I know I'm going to hear from a lot of people saying, 'Believe me, kid, 38 is really young. And as a 39 year old, you believe me, I like hearing that. So, I know in relative terms it's young. But in terms of the range of ages of people who are a real part of the public dialog on news and politics I think this skew is worth considering.)