For Young, Daily News Eclipsed By Daily Show

David at Freedom Writing is afraid that we're actually forgetting what news is:

I grew up in the 1970s, when it took a couple of years for enough irrefutable evidence to accumulate to lead to the resignation of Richard Nixon. The lesson of that experience was not lost on me.

But I was dismayed, some 20 years later, when I found myself in a classroom instructing aspiring journalists, many of whom expected news stories to be resolved immediately — and exhibited a certain impatience when they were not.

And that was before the influence of the internet and the more pervasive presence of cable and satellite TV — both of which have fed the fallacious impression that others can do the job of gathering the news better than trained journalists.

Today, the Huffington Post is reporting that a Rasmussen survey indicates that about one-third of Americans under the age of 40 believe that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are replacing traditional news outlets.

These men are intelligent and articulate. They may even have some insights into news events. But they are not — I repeat, not — trained news gatherers.