Ted Koppel on ‘Late Show’: Web Journalism is News Readers “Want,” Not What They “Need”

By Kyle Dowling (kyle.dowling@mstarsnews.com) | Nov 24, 2015 12:11 PM EST

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Famed journalist Ted Koppel appeared on Monday night's episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. During his panel, Colbert asked what Koppel's thoughts were on the state of journalism in 2015, given his stature in the industry. And, unsurprisingly, he doesn't seem too fond of it.

Koppel admitted that the state of journalism today is much different than what it used to be, specifically because back in the day there were several outlets battling it out to give people the news that they needed to hear. Today, however, there are even more outlets, and all of them are incessantly striving to give readers the news they want to hear about.

You know, like how you can turn Thanksgiving into a drinking game, or look at the top five photos of Miley Cyrus for her birthday.

In Colbert's question, he asked Koppel to give his answer "in the form of a list of 17 cats that look like world leaders" – ribbing the likes of BuzzFeed and other web-based publications.

"We have so much journalism," Koppel said. "Everyone is in competition for a tiny little fragment of the audience, whereas 30 or 40 years ago, we used to be in competition to try and give people the news that they need. Now we're in competition to give people the news that they want."

To that, Koppel noted that people such as Colbert end up doing the more "serious" journalism of the past.

Naturally, Koppel's comments ring rather true. In fact, they sound remarkably familiar to a report done by The Daily Show back in 2014 with then-host Jon Stewart, one which detailed the rise in popularity of aggregated news and death of print journalism.

Koppel appeared on The Late Show to promote his newest book Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath. Grab the book over on Amazon.

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