Gretchen Carlson
Photo by Ashton Worthington for Stanford MagazineMy profile of Fox & Friends host Gretchen Carlson is up now at Stanford Magazine. Carlson, '90, has a unique and fascinating resume - she's a classically trained violinist, Miss America 1989, an award-winning journalist, and a former aspiring lawyer who turned to television journalism after an unexpected appearance on a prank show.
Carlson reaches roughly 1 million viewers every morning as the co-host of "Fox & Friends," which has dominated the #1 cable morning talk show spot for a decade. People who don't watch "Fox & Friends" have seen her clips skewered by Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann, both ardent critics of Carlson and her employer, Fox News. From the article:Carlson is one of many television personalities crossing the line between the dispassionate reporting of the old media era and the fiercely partisan crossfire of the new one. Fox News launched in 1996, just as the Internet was transforming news consumption. The arrival of opinion in cable news, Carlson says, was "brilliant foresight" on the part of Fox News president Roger Ailes, who realized that viewers already knew the day's events—what kept their attention was hearing other people's thoughts about them.
Carlson believes television news will never go back to its just-the-facts approach, nor should it. No matter which side of the debate you're on, she says, the dialogue is compelling. "Either I really agree with that, or I really disagree with that, but I can't stop watching."
Posted on Tuesday, Jan 11, 2011
