CBS: Failing as a 21st Century News Organization

This month we've seen two executive producers of network evening news broadcasts replaced, and I think these changes provide an opportunity to talk about the far more fundamental changes that traditional news organizations face in the age of the Internet. I'll be filling this out in detail, looking at television and print organizations.

For now, as a placeholder, I'd like to point out that my former employer CBS doesn't get it. CBS News has been neglected (and cut to the bone) for a long time. Andrew Heyward didn't get any of his (presumably) ambitious ideas approved while ABC and NBC were investing heavily in cable TV and the web, so he stopped asking. Dan Rather continued to protect the status quo and corporate headquarters didn't see an asset they wanted to invest in. And all the while the world was changing.

And now we have the talented Katie Couric (and the talented Rome Hartman) blogging the segments from the evening news... literally, entering the copy from these segments into a blog, and generally putting on the type of evening newscast that Connie Chung would do. Why even bother? For CBS, it's not the evening broadcast that needs tweaking, its the fundamental focus of the division. The institution is broken, and I'm not sure it's salvageable.

What does CBS News stand for? Is it the place I go for political coverage? Health coverage? Cultural coverage? Nah, I have other sources for those. What is it? CBS News has slowly, sadly drifted into irrelevance for today's audiences. You can look at all of CBS Television with this perspective and see the same trends.

--

Still to come on this topic: ABC and NBC, which aren't quite as blind at CBS. The New York Times and Dow Jones provide good studies in how print is responding to change. Am I missing any other interesting old-media case studies?