Ruben Navarrette ~ Tweet: Everyone's a pundit (My thoughts)

San Diego Union Tribune
Ruben Navarrette. Sunday. June 13th
 Original Column >>>  Tweet: Everyone's a pundit
Column put some thoughts in my head

As a recent college graduate, I sit at the crossroads of my life.
Do I settle on a job or do I follow my dreams?
Do I continue to float along the between stage, or do I take proactive steps toward my development?

Before I'm able to make these decisions the media and its overly-sensationalistic pessimism scares many of my peers, to the point of noteasily believing what is blurted out in their televisions.

As life often does, it changes with an unswerving emphasis placed on surprising those of us who have become all too comfortable with the status quo. The media has been bombarded by such changes as the power and voice of the individual has become greater and louder. Unfortunately, for those of us who are trying to make a living out of being a pundit or expert, we are finding that individuals with illegitimized power have become the de facto leaders of "the news." We have no Walter Cronkite. There is not one person who acts as the "end-all-be-all" of network news. Sure, some try, such as Olbermann, Maddow on the left and Hannity and Limbaughs on the right. People have lost faith in these individuals and turned to social networks for their news. You dont have to have attended an Ivy League schoool to be relevant anymore, you must have the ability to get your point across both, vividly and interesting.

Rather than antagonizing the situation as older folks tend to do, newspaper columnists, especially, must have the ability to remian relevant while touching the lives of a variety of people, rather than a select and adept few, or else there will be a generation of American youth who question the importance and social capital vested in reading the newspaper.