The following are extended excerpts of her interview with media correspondent Terence Smith. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Anchors discuss their 2000 election night coverage . A look at the new ways of covering the 2000 political conventions . New technologies are changing the way people watch television .
Media companies form content partnerships .
You have said that the evening news broadcasts are no longer the cultural icon that they once were. The evening newscast, when it came about in full force in the sixties, was an agenda setter. That does not describe life in America today, and to the degree that the evening newscast was supposed to help America understand what today was like, it may have been realistic then, but Americans have a lot more ways now to figure out what happened today. Local news has grown up, the Internet has grown up, cable news has grown up. These are all choices that the American public has and uses, very efficiently, to the detriment of the evening news.