TV News Anchors and Journalistic Tradition

The Author: Kimberly Meltzer, Ph.D., is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Georgetown University in the graduate program in Communication, Culture & Technology.

«As news networks proliferate and an array of newcomers move onto the stage of evening television news, Kimberly Meltzer offers a timely and thoughtful assessment of the rise of the anchor, from Edward R. Murrow to Katie Couric. Meltzer examines the anomalous nature of these figures, who remain the most visible symbols of American journalism even as their celebrity status and often emotional personas contradict the ideals of that profession. Meltzer then relays industry insiders' own views of the field, as they search for a new kind of relevance in the landscape of 21st-century journalism.» (Carolyn Kitch, Professor of Journalism; Director, Doctoral Program in Mass Media & Communication, Temple University; author of 'Pages from the Past: History and Memory in American Magazines')
«Kimberly Meltzer offers a thorough and dispassionate explanation of how television journalism has emerged over the past fifty years as a formation that challenges, accepts, alters, and disdains newspaper conventions. In her capable hands, our obsession with television anchors - that is, the controversy and contention over anchors' displays of emotion, appearance, and personality - finally begins to make sense. Without sugarcoating the downsides but also acknowledging the technological inevitability of television's adaption of journalistic rules, she traces the emergence of the anchor's 'signature'. Drawing on her own experience as well as rich interview material, Meltzer explains just why we are so interested in Katie, Dan, and Tom - and quite literally, their bodies - and why this is likely to continue.» (Linda Steiner, Professor and Director of Research and Doctoral Studies, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park)