WRITTEN BY ANDREW BEAUJON
When Jim Vance died in July, the city’s response was immediate and heartfelt, stretching across boundaries of race, income, and neighborhood. It was also, most likely, the last of its kind. Washingtonians will never again mourn a TV news personality the way they grieved for the NBC4 anchor. In part that’s because the audience for local TV news keeps shrinking and aging, but it’s also because the Washington where Vance worked for more than 45 years no longer exists. This region was a Podunk with 2.7 million people when he moved here in the late ’60s; now it holds more than 6 million, and by 2030 we’re projected to add 1.5 million more. In this sprawling, global region—as in our sprawling, globalized media environment—it’s hard to imagine a mere local-news anchor breaking through to stardom.
