Would Jon Stewart make for a good network news anchor? It may seems like an absurd question, but MarketWatch's Jon Friedman raises it anyway. "I know the arguments against the idea," he prefaces. But Stewart is "America's most trusted name in news among his fans":

Stewart is the first to tell anyone who will listen that he is an entertainer, not a journalist. He intends to make people laugh and think, probably in that order.

But what is a journalist, anyway, in 2010? A blogger, who has no experience, can consider himself or herself a serious journalist. So can your garden-variety loudmouth on any cable-news channel... Stewart gets lots of laughs for his pointed commentaries about the news industry's sacred cows. Perhaps he may secretly yearn to have credibility as a pundit.

In a quick retort, Ernie Smith at Short Form Blog takes the air out of Friedman's balloon:

So, you’re ask­ing, why do we think this is a stu­pid idea? Because Jon Stewart’s author­ity as a media com­men­ta­tor is largely the prod­uct of his outside-looking-in dynamic. Oh, and he’s a come­dian, not a jour­nal­ist. Oh, and we think Ander­son Cooper prob­a­bly has the inside track for this.

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John Hudson