Lester Holt leaving NBC Nightly News

[Typist Clerk]

I used to like Lester, but he and the other networks have abdicated their role in the face of Trump. Holt, to me, was particularly egregious in this regard. I really expected a Black man to push back against Cheetos' bullship, but he never did.

I mean, he's no Cuck Todd, but I expected better.

He's there to report facts, not give opinions.

 

[HanSenSE]

This is largely a misconception. A good chunk of the 55+ crowd is still watching the evening news. The network news shows dwarf the viewership of the cable networks.

I'm in the 55+ crowd and, while I don't watch every night, there's days when the cable folks get a little long-winded on a story I'll change channels, knowing I can watch the networks in a couple of hours and get a quick, clear picture of what happened.

 

[LanceyHoward]

I used to like Lester, but he and the other networks have abdicated their role in the face of Trump. Holt, to me, was particularly egregious in this regard. I really expected a Black man to push back against Cheetos' bullship, but he never did.

Holt worked his way up through anchoring local news from an early age. He is a gifted anchor with an excellent on-air presence. But he does not have a lot of reporting experience. I think most local stations want their anchors to be anodyne and if they venture out of the studio it is to do stories on adopting puppies. As a result Holt is a guy who has spent his career is trying not to make anyone angry. And he has had a highly successful career.

Back in the day of anchor gods like Rather, Brokaw, Jennings and Cronkite they were selected in part because they had extensive reporting experience and were good at it. For example, Cronkite had covered the European theater in WWII. CBS sent Cronkite during his anchor tenure to Viet Nam for two weeks, at the end of which he concluded on-air that the United States could not win outright and needed to negotiate. Cronkite has earned the ire of Viet Nam hawks ever since. There is no way that a network would want their anchor to get dragged in a controversy like that today.

 

[Monday Morning Sportswriter]

I was watching NBC on election night, and Lester Holt was barely mediating, let alone commentating. It made me wonder if something was wrong. It was all Savannah Gutherie that night.

 

[Liut]

He's 65. I just don't have an idea who the heir apparent is. The network news anchor job isn't what it used to be, but Holt would be my choice to hear about the end of the world. Crazy times at NBC between this and Joy Reid's show getting axed. Though Reid's ratings were terrible and I think Holt has the highest of the broadcast news shows. Crazy that CBS dumped O'Donnell and the replacements have been even farther behind ABC and NBC.

I have a lot of respect for John deckerson's journalistic chops, but he's miscast in his current role.

 

[TigerVols]

I have a lot of respect for John deckerson's journalistic chops, but he's miscast in his current role.

I've listened to him on the Slate political podcast for years (come to think of it I am pretty sure it's the first podcast I subscribed to back in 2007) but I don't see how he would make it as a main anchor.