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Jon Stewart to Cover Election for Washington Post?
By
Harry Jaffe
The Daily Show is in talks to bring Jon Stewart's irreverent style online and write for washingtonpost.com.
You never can tell what the Washington Post will bring—in addition to the news. Monday it was a little bag of oatmeal in the newspaper’s plastic delivery sleeve. Today it was Patrick Dempsey leaning on his wife’s pregnant belly on the cover of Life, a photo-driven weekly supplement that will arrive with the paper every Thursday. Tomorrow it could be Jon Stewart on washingtonpost.com. Sources who are part of the talks report that the Post’s Web site is talking with Comedy Central about joining forces with The Daily Show to cover the 2008 presidential campaign. These sources say that washingtonpost.com CEO & publisher Caroline Little and editor Jim Brady have been part of the conversations in New York. No one could be reached to confirm the talks. The prospect of mixing Jon Stewart’s brand of irreverence with Dan Balz’s serious analysis could draw more readers to washingtonpost.com. Stewart and his zany crew covered the last presidential campaign with a mocking tone that delighted the coveted 25- to 34-year-old demographic. Their DVD—The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Indecision 2004—was a big seller. Many viewers thought that Stewart and crew at the conventions were much more entertaining than the talking heads on the evening news—or on cable. Making a deal with Comedy Central would bring the Washington Post Company together with Viacom, which owns the cable network. At the upper echelons, the Post already is in league with Microsoft, with Melinda Gates on its board of trustees. A deal with Comedy Central would link the Post to Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom. The Post also collaborates with MSNBC and the Wall Street Journal.
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Comments
Stewart's humor depends in part on his facial reactions and short verbal ripostes to clips of Bushtalk. I love Jon Stewart completely, but I don't see how this could successfully translate into print. We already have Mo Dowd, Molly Ivins and Garrison Keillor on the sardonic Bush beat.
Maybe this is an attempt to make Jon fail on television--the flip side of what happened to Limbaugh. Watch your back, Jon, and remember Phil Donahue.
Posted by: J. Marra |
The minute Stewart does this he loses all credibility with me.
He's already too nice to people like Trent Lott, John Ashcroft, Bill Kristol and others who have contributed to the destruction of our system of constitutional checks and balances.
I've felt for quite awhile that he's auditioning for some other gig - maybe replacing David Letterman? Whatever it is, he's not nearly as acerbic as he should be any more.
The Daily Show has become passe.and if Stewrat takes this gig he will become irrelevant.
Posted by: matt |
Never a problem when it comes to seeing/hearing Jon Stewart and his crew.I'll take him any way I can get him. Bring it on, WaPo!!!
Posted by: Jean S. Markovitz |
why should he? he's doing fine. the post is a tool of the rich and powerful. i don't trust any "mainstream" media. they're just trying to buy him off
Posted by: jdavis |
Yuk.
Posted by: pat |
Stewart's greatest achievement is his willingness to ask the questions that Americans want answered, as opposed to the usual fawning and obsequy provided by the seemingly docile and compliant Washington Press Corps, who with rare deviations seem to simply type up what the crooked Bush administration flacks dish out.
The gentle but direct smackdown of Bill Kristol is a case in point-it wasn't rude or hostile but it made the point emphatically that BK was wrong, refused to admit that he was and continues to be wrong, and yet no death threats were made as is typical of the right wing.
Stephen Colbert's brilliant speech at the WPC gridiron dinner, however, is what I would like to see more of. I grew up watching the post-Watergate boom in investigative journalism, where social rank and political power were reasons to examine issues, not to defer to them in fear of financial reprisals. That didn't work so well for Bob Parry, or at all for Danny Casolaro and Gary Webb.
Posted by: Biff Spaceman |
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Posted at
11:32 AM/ET, 01/11/2007 in
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