The rise of the TikTok news anchor
A horde of pocket Cronkites will read the papers and tell you, like, what they say
“BREAKING NEWS: it looks like there is some weird stuff going on in America.” Welcome to the news on TikTok. Before we dwell on how and when it is appropriate to start a sentence with “breaking news”, let’s cross now to our correspondent, who is a cartoon fish, with a story about a “Potential Diabetes Cure!” (3.4m views). Next, “News Daddy” (a boy called Dylan) will read out details of a hotel explosion in Texas to some of his 10.3m followers, thankfully from the safety of his home studio in Britain; “Nah 2024 needs to chill…i need some sleep,” the description reads. In our final segment, a college student is primed to run through the pages of the New York Times (the Iowa caucus is “just tea, it’s gossip”).
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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Pocket Cronkites”
United States January 27th 2024
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