Anderson IS The Model

CNN’s Whitaker: ‘Anderson Cooper is the model’

by Julie Moos
PublishedJuly 25, 20111:47 pm
UpdatedJuly 25, 20111:58 pm

CNN’s new managing editor Mark Whitaker says, “I think we’re in a day and age when you can have all the qualities of a great journalist but have a human side as well, and even a sense of humor. In many ways Anderson Cooper is the model that we increasingly are going to, not that everyone has to be Anderson Cooper.”

Whitaker sees parallels between his CNN job and his job as editor of Newsweek from 1998-2006:

We knew at Newsweek that we weren’t delivering headlines: By the time readers got to us, they already knew what the basic news stories were. So we woke up every day asking, how do we advance the ball in a way that’s compelling? The irony is that news moves so fast now that cable news is in the same boat that newsmagazines were 25 years ago.