I’ve been trying to think of something to say about Dan Rather’s final broadcast from the anchor’s chair of The CBS Evening News, but I can’t find the right approach. The problem is that I’m really not sure anyone cares about Rather’s departure, aside from political right-wingers who see him as the embodiment of their hated “liberal media” and so are thrilled to see him go. While professional observers view Rather’s choice to step down — as well as Tom Brokaw’s recent retirement — as “the end of an era,” the public seems to be yawning with indifference.

It wasn’t like this when Rather’s predecessor, Walter Cronkite, stepped down. I think it’s fair to say (based, of course, on my readings into media history and not personal memory) that Cronkite’s departure produced a near-universal sense of warmth and fond regret to see him go. I can remember my parents tuning in to Cronkite’s final show with an air almost of apprehension, like they were about to lose a member of their family. No one I know feels that way today about Rather or Brokaw. But then, to use an oft-repeated phrase, it was a different world in Cronkite’s day.

Throughout most of Cronkite’s reign at CBS, there were only three TV networks — cable was just beginning to penetrate into a significant number of American homes when he left in 1981 — and even though there were deeply divisive issues at play in American culture, journalists were widely seen as being above the fray. Their job was to find the truth of what was going on in the world, and the network anchorman, more than any other flavor of journalist, was the guy who delivered that truth to the public. People on both sides of the political spectrum trusted Cronkite and his contemporaries to provide the news in a relatively spin-free manner. When Cronkite broke a long-standing journalistic taboo and announced his personal opinion on-air that America had lost the war in Vietnam, the tide of public opinion shifted direction almost overnight, because if Walter-freakin’-Cronkite said it, then surely that’s the way it must be.

Today, we can only imagine that level of innocence, and perhaps many of us can’t even do that. I find that incredibly sad because, while we may have more information available today than at any other point in history, I think we’re far less united in how we understand and interpret that information. My readings of recent history suggest there was far more consensus of what the news actually was in the bygone Cronkite era. That’s not to say there was consensus on political issues — Vietnam, anyone? — but people could at least agree on what issues were worth talking about. More importantly, they could agree on the purity of the information source. That’s not how it is now, when the two sides of the political spectrum have their own separate news media, for the most part, and they deeply distrust the media of the other side. Right-wingers have their talk radio and the Fox network and they constantly grouse about the liberal biases they see in the “mainstream” press. On the other hand, left-leaning types like myself laugh at those accusations, and fret about our perception that the press is so terrified of being accused of bias that it’s no longer effective at holding our government accountable. And meanwhile everyone is getting their news from a mind-boggling plethora of sources that weren’t even dreamed of in 1981, sources such as blogs, which often focus on obscure stories that the press isn’t covering, and Internet feeds that give everyone the equivalent of the old teletype machines that once were the exclusive domain of the Cronkites and Brinkleys. In the Web-enabled World of Tomorrow — Today! — the TV anchorman has become largely irrelevant in terms of providing information, and the information he does provide is usually suspect to half the audience.

Perhaps it’s fitting that Dan Rather is leaving the anchor desk with so little public affection, since he, as much as any other single individual, is to blame for this bizarre breakdown of the public’s trust in the media. There are many, many factors that have contributed to the current rancor between left and right, but it was Rather’s cantankerous hectoring of President Nixon that first inspired the right to coin the notion of a liberal bias in the press. Rather has continued to provide ammunition for these charges over the years, such as when he badgered the first President Bush during an 1988 interview or the recent flap over his report on the current President Bush’s National Guard service.

Personally, I’m ambivalent about ol’ Dan. I do admire his defiant persistence in pursuing his questions and wish the new generation of White House press was so gutsy. However, his pit-bull attitude has contributed greatly to the bad feelings that are sapping the energy from our public discourse. In addition, his craving for adventure has led him into some bizarre, dangerous, and downright ridiculous situations that haven’t enhanced the perception of a network anchor as a sober, trustworthy bastion of dignity. Cronkite he ain’t, folks. But then it ain’t Cronkite’s world, either.

And that, I think, is the real story behind Rather’s departure. It isn’t that he’s not as loved as his predecessor; it’s that the paradigm of his predecessor is now as quaint to us as broadcasting in fuzzy black-and-white. Just as we now have radio stations that play only one very narrow kind of music for one very tightly defined audience, we also have news targeted to specific segments of the political spectrum, instead of news for everybody. And I think our society is suffering for it. This hyper-differentiation of the news isn’t Dan Rather’s fault, but he contributed to it, and it happened on his watch.

I don’t know if I’m going to miss seeing Dan Rather in that anchor’s chair — I suspect I’ll make the adjustment quickly — but I do miss the more unified culture that Dan ushered out when he took over the CBS anchor chair in 1981.