of my college friends, the guy we always made fun of for being dumb is now on-air all the time on cnn. he was basically pretty attractive and could read teleprompters. they could replace most of these guys with computer-generated facsimiles of people pretty easily.

tv news is dead if you're able to make sense of a bunch of facts presented to you. all you gotta do is find reasonably accurate facts. the only exception you can find at a normal newsrack is the atlantic, it's a fucking great magazine and if i had a seal of approval it would get it. no pandering, no vital ties to academia resulting in politics and posturing, and it doesn't require tons of prior knowledge like the specialized rags.