CNN prez Jon Klein is his usual blah self in an interview in "Gotham" magazine. Here's the thing, though. Read all the way to the last graf of the interview, about his love for his children and of screenwriting--he says he got into the news biz to be able to make enough money to write screenplays; he's working on a script for the incredibly gifted Jerry Bruckheimer, for crying out loud, and Bruckheimer doesn't suffer fools at all--and it clicks. The reason Jon Klein is a mediocre news exec who gets picked on all the time for his patently absurd statements (for example, in the Gotham piece, saying "The audience instinctively responds to authenticity. That’s what draws them to people like Anderson Cooper...." Uh, the audience isn't drawn to Cooper; his ratings suck) is because news isn't his calling, his passion, or his heart. Klein's punching the clock in a business and a position that demands intensity and heat.
You can get an idea of what a funny, smart guy he is off the clock by this exchange in the piece:
G: With cable outlets like CNN and MSNBC, do you think network news is dead?
JK: It’s not dead. It got a good scare. It tripped down the stairs and hit its head, and it’s going to be very different—but it’s going to survive.
See? He's funny, he's vivid, he's imaginative. In other words, perfect scriptwriter material. But he's not a good cable news chief and it shows.
(Also, Gotham magazine gets a HUGE roll-your-eyes demerit/Bronx cheer for its laughably obvious suck-up omission of the number one cable news channel, Fox News, in the question above. Talk about not being suited to your job; writer Michael Dougherty is a real RINO: Reporter In Name Only.)
