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A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

I am still reeling after watching the latest amazing “news” piece from Jon Stewart. I wrap “news” in inverted commas because this man is a comedian and a great one at that. So why is he more important than any of the talking heads on cable TV news and political shows?

Here’s why – In an era where newspapers are dying and mainstream TV and cable media are flailing around trying to increase viewers by using limp content, Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News points out that “Great research trumps good access to the powerful.” In essence all Stewart’s team did was juxtapose past remarks on the economy from people like the CEO of Ford or blowhard and so called ’stocks wizard’ Jim Cramer and even bigger blowhard CNBC’s Rick Santelli [who in a magnificent performance gets traders on the floor to boo President Obama because "we shouldn't be paying for those folks who can't pay their mortgages, those losers!"] and compared them to more recent statements to show how hypocritical these people have been and continue to be. Great research all available at any journalist’s fingertips online. Stewart’s team just did the research and then they are not afraid to have Jon go out and skewer these people not lionize them.

You must watch the Stewart video.

And here’s an extract from Will Bunch’s very prescient article:

As briefly noted here earlier, the most talked-about journalism of the day wasn’t produced by the New York Times, CNN, Newsweek or NPR. It was Jon Stewart’s epic, eight-minute takedown on last night’s “Daily Show” of CNBC’s clueless, in-the-tank reporting of inflatable bubbles and blowhard CEOs as the U.S. and world economies slowly slid into a meltdown. You can quibble about Stewart’s motives in starting the piece — after he was spurned for an interview by CNBC’s faux populist ranter Rick Santelli — but you can’t argue with the results.

The piece wasn’t just the laugh-out-loud funniest thing on TV all week (and this was a week in which NBC rebroadcast the SNL “more cowbell” sketch, so that’s saying a lot) but it was exquistely reported, insightful, and it tapped into America’s real anger about the financial crisis in a way that mainstream journalism has found so elusive all these months. As one commenter on the Romenesko blog noted earlier today, “it’s simply pathetic that one has to watch a comedy show to see things like this.”

But that’s not all. The Stewart piece also got the kind of eyeballs that most newsrooms would kill for in this digital age — planted atop many, many major political, media and business Web sites — and the kind of water-cooler chatter that journalists would crave in any age. In a time when newspapers are flat-out dying if not dealing with bankruptcy or massive job losses, while other types of news orgs aren’t faring much better, the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn’t be viewed as a stick in the eye — but a teachable moment. Why be a curmudgeon about kids today getting all their news from a comedy show, when it’s not really that hard to join Stewart in his own idol-smashing game.

Read the rest of the Will Bunch article here. It’s a great read for anyone in media.