This past weekend I saw Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, which oddly enough is the sequel to Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.
In both movies Will Ferrell helms a cast of characters in a television newsroom where various hijinks ensue.
While the jokes in the movie are easy to see, what may be missed by the casual viewer are the kernels of truth that show the steady decline from the evening news being a source of information to it becoming merely a source of entertainment and low calorie news.
To be fair the golden age of journalism had already come and gone by the time I started Journalism school.
That is not to say that there are not still many fine journalists working today but merely to point out that the days of all journalists being held in high regard and only reporting well vetted factual stories has passed.
Photo R. Anderson
With the advent of the 24-hour news cycle journalists had transitioned from people reporting the news to in many cases being larger than life and part of the news themselves.
Of course one need only read the story of Icarus to know what happens when one flies too close to the sun.
This past year several high profile journalists from national news outlets were suspended when it was learned that some of their stories were not as factual as they were led to believe.
One of the higher profile incidents of this involved a reporter for 60 Minutes which in many ways started the television news magazine format.
It would be easy to blame the increase in journalists taking shortcuts on the internet and the 24-hour news channels.
One could argue that with more pressure to be the first with a story shortcuts are often taken but the fact remains there are no shortcuts to good reporting.
A news story is only as good as the facts that are contained within it and the writer who brings so facts to light in a way that the reader or viewer can understand and act upon.
While it is true that pictures and infographics can enhance a story they are not substitutes for the facts.
When USA Today was first published there were those in the media at the time that thought that a national newspaper filled with shorter stories and more charts and graphs than the rest of the papers on the market would be a flash in the pan and fizzle out.
Instead USA Today , once deemed the
