two departures

I'm seeing delicate phrasing that Tucker Carlson "is leaving" Fox News. Carlson is one of Fox's major draws (I don't find anyone else on Fox watchable), so axing Tucker (if that's in fact what happened) is probably a mistake, but I imagine it made sense to some idiot hiding in the twisted bowels of the Fox bureaucracy.

Skip across the toxic swamp of legacy news media, and the other big departure is Don Lemon, the Trump-obsessed CNN talking head who once said something sane ten years back, then never resurfaced from his insanity. Unlike Tucker's "leaving," Don Lemon has been quite clearly fired—"terminated" in his own words.

I've watched a few Tucker videos, and I've seen some Lemon segments, too. I'm much too invested in smaller-scale, independent media (Tim Pool, Styx, etc.) to care much either way about Carlson or Lemon. I have no doubt that Carlson will find a niche for himself; even the old, creepy Bill O'Reilly managed to tuck himself inside a small gap in the news-media coral reef. I can only pray that Don Lemon never finds work again, but I'm sure he'll make millions from some stupid memoir (check back with this post when Lemon fulfills my prophecy).

Ultimately, these two are legacy-media casualties in an ever-evolving-but-always-cutthroat business. Their departures are seismically significant right now, but everyone forgets earthquakes eventually. Until the next one.

Does all of this feed the narrative that the legacy media (a.k.a., "the MSM") are dying? I can only hope so, but to my mind, they're not dying fast enough.

ADDENDUM: this source (among others) contends that Tucker Carlson was out-and-out fired. Lots of speculation as to why.