Dan Rather Interviewed at SXSW

SXSW REPORT — Monday’s keynote speech was by one of the most acclaimed names in broadcast journalism history, Dan Rather. The man who, rather unfortunately, became a symbol for the rise of the blogosphere when his report on President Bush’s National Guard service was called into question and led to his resignation. One could say coming to speak to a room full of bloggers, he was literally walking into the hornet’s nest.

But since leaving CBS News, Rather has been working on his show airing for Mark Cuban’s HDNet. In this video from Chuck Olsen’s Minnesota Stories, he sat down with blogger Andy Carvin, and had some choice words to say about the news organization, and others like it, that he left behind:

Larger and larger corporations, fewer and fewer in number, have taken control of more and more of the major disseminators of news in the country.

While he qualifies his statement by declaring that not necessarily a bad thing, he does blame the “corporatization” of media for a decline in the quality of news. Sadly, the SXSW video blog has yet to post anything, so I can’t find any footage of the actual keynote.