NBC announced yesterday Tom Brokaw will moderate Meet the Press during the election season, taking over for the recently deceased Tim Russert. The obvious benefits Brokaw are his decades of experience, headlining NBC Nightly News for more than 20 years. Steve Boriss of Future of News points out, this as a step backward.

NBC has decided to take a step backward, replacing Tim Russert with dino-anchor Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press. Actually, the decision was made for them because a step forward, or even a step to the side, does not exist. Network news is over.

Brokaw is an amazing journalist that my parents loved. And my grandparents. Network news wants raise its audience, but playing to the aging baby boomers is short term thinking (not to be too morbid here). There are several generations of people under 40 who don’t care about network news.

Brokaw is especially ironic in an election season pitting the old versus the new. John McCain and Hillary Clinton push the standard baby boomer sales pitches in an election season when Obama’s change mantra became as refreshing as a politician knowing how to use a computer. Tom Brokaw is network news answer to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

The problem is there isn’t a new generation of reporters to take over for Russert. Even if Brokaw is only temporary, there aren’t many options to replace him (Aaron Brown please?).  Few journalists today have the years of experience as foreign correspondents and hard news junkies that shaped the last generation of news anchors, giving us credible newsmen. NBC had to move backwards because there isn’t anybody in front.

Tim Russert, journalist and moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, died June 13th of a sudden heart attack, first reported on his Wikipedia page at 3:01 p.m. The New York Post had a short announcement half an hour later followed by the first televised announcement by Tom Brokaw on NBC at 3:39 p.m. The IP address of the editor came from Internet Broadcast Systems, an IT company that worked with NBC in the past.

Wikipedia’s scoop raises questions about its legitimacy as a news source. The ability for anybody to edit Wikipedia can and has led to abuses of the online encyclopedia and has hurt its credibility among educators, parents, and people who don’t understand the system. I won’t expect a reporter or user to trust Wikipedia absolutely just like I won’t trust the New York Times or a blog without some kind of citation or corroboration.

Wikipedia’s strength, as evidenced by the Russert edit, is the site can respond quickly to new information The risk is this information isn’t properly vetted, but that’s what the community is for - a community mainstream news organizations don’t have, leading even the most trustworthy sources to post incorrect information and take longer to correct it.

Wikipedia remains an encyclopedia, not a news organization (that’s what Wikinews is for). But can these lines blur?