People are making a big deal of Tom Brokaw's departure from NBC nightly news. For example, see here and here. But Maureen Dowd's column in NYT was excellent. A bit of background - each of the 3 major broadcast networks, NBC, CBS and ABC have a half hour news every night. The news itself was a big deal in the pre-internet, pre-cable TV era. Nevertheless, the veteran news anchor trio of Tom Brokaw (NBC), Dan Rather (CBS) and Peter Jennings (ABC) command people's respect and trust (well, to some extent anyway). Brokaw stepped down after 21 years, Rather has announced he'll be signing off early next year. Some people were hoping there would be some diversity after these guys bid their adieus. Seems rather unlikely. It looks like these three white men will be followed by another three white men - Brian Williams is stepping in Brokaw's shoe, all the guys in the running for the CBS seat are white men, and by extrapolation, it is a safe bet that Jennings will be followed by a white man when he steps down (there's no talk of that yet).