Whatever happened to Aaron Brown?

Something has been troubling me about journalism lately. Lots of things, actually. I can't stand when conservatives and/or well meaning non-progressives mistakenly think that FOX NEWS actually is "Fair and balanced" and that all other news sources are "liberal." FOX is a blatant Republican propaganda machine and all other sources, including FOX's competition CNN and MSNBC are CORPORATE, not liberal. They're all about making money, not reporting fairly or accurately. About pulling in ratings, not providing the electorate with information for making intelligent decisions.

Witness CNN's 2006/2007 transformations- Headline news went from just reporting straight news over and over every half hour to being trashy tabloid "info-tainment." Their CNN prime time line up includes an Entertainment Tonight type of show, a salacious courtroom melodrama staring Nancy Grace that is pretty much all OJ type stories all the time, and of course, the gentlest Right Wing Radio blabber fascist on the air, Glenn Beck. Thank God he's not Quite as bad as O'Rielly or Rush- but in some ways that makes him worse, because he's insidiously mild-mannered enough to make you forget that he's just another propagandist and nothing close to a journalist.

But what has really bothered me most is, whatever happened to Aaron Brown and Newsnight? For a week or so, CNN pretended to move pretty boy Anderson Cooper up to become Brown's co-anchor, but it didn't take long before they shoved Brown aside altogether. When it comes down to it, if I were fair, I'd admit that Cooper isn't the worst journalist ever. He's committed and tries to be serious, although let's face it, his show is all about packaging the news, and not about in depth reporting or analysis. Now granted, Brown was way more warm and personal than the folks at the PBS News Hour, but he was still about the story, not the glory.

I especially miss his round-up of the next day's newspaper front page headlines that he ended every show with. Today I broke down and Googled, "Whatever happened to Aaron Brown?" and this is what I found. At least, as a native Arizonan, I can be proud that he's teaching at the state U.

Former CNN anchor Brown welcomes job at ASU

May. 16, 2006 12:00 AM

Whatever happened to Aaron Brown?

I'm asked that at least once a week. When CNN shunted its former anchor aside so that Anderson Cooper might get more air time, Brown disappeared (and with good reason: He's still under contract, so he couldn't show up on a competitor), leaving viewers to wonder where he'd surface.

Wonder no longer: Beginning next spring, Brown, 57, will serve for one semester as the John J. Rhodes Chair in Public Policy and American Institutions in the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University. And if Christopher Callahan, dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communications, gets his wish, Brown might stick around longer.

"I'm really open to it." Brown said of considering teaching future journalism classes. "I'm at a point in my life where I'm really trying to figure out what I want to do, how much I want to do, what sort of challenges I haven't done I'd like to take on."

Brown's first day at work at CNN, where he moved from ABC, was Sept. 11, 2001. Stories don't get any bigger. His offbeat, folksy style was a comfort; eventually it was parlayed into a prime-time show on CNN, which was slower paced and more thoughtful than typical TV news fare, practically anti-television in some respects: It included his reading the following day's headlines from papers around the country.

The effect was polarizing. Some viewers hated it. It wasn't what they were used to. Others loved it. It wasn't what they were used to.

Park Callahan squarely in the latter camp.

"In my mind, he is one of the leading broadcast journalists that we have," Callahan said, adding that Brown "just seems to me to be the kind of journalist we want our students to emulate."

Mark Jacobs, the Barrett Honors College dean, agreed, saying Brown was "a totally natural kind of person to come in for the Rhodes Chair. . . . It's wonderful for all of us."

Brown, who said he attended the University of Minnesota briefly, said he's not particularly worried about a future television gig conflicting with teaching. While he's interested in projects and such, Brown said he's not seeking another anchor job.

"I'm not looking to do that which I've already done again to simply do it again," he said. "To my satisfaction, I've accomplished in that arena the things I set out to accomplish. I'd like to accomplish some things outside the traditional evening news arena."

Outside the arena and into the classroom, then, one place where ratings don't matter.