The longest-running news anchor on American television is stepping down. He will be missed, simply because he is a cut so far above all the blow-dried nincompoops on network and cable television. From the Washington Post story today:

Jim Lehrer, who has anchored PBS's NewsHour program for 36 years, said Thursday morning that he is stepping down from the daily broadcast, ending the longest run of a national anchorman.

Lehrer, 76, said he would leave as anchor on June 6 but would continue to appear on Fridays to moderate the show's weekly news analysis segment featuring a panel of journalists.

. . .

In addition to his familiar role on PBS, the widely respected Lehrer may be best known to American audiences as the moderator of presidential debates. He has handled that job 11 times, including one of the debates between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008.

Lehrer's career spans several eras of television, from a time when most people had black and white sets to the digital age. When he was honored last month with a career achievement award by the National Press Club, the club's president, Mark Hamrick, announced his selection by saying, "Amid the cacophony of a sometimes shrill media landscape, he has remained the true voice of reason, balance and fairness."

I second that accolade. Lehrer strove to keep the PBS news show as close as possible to the older sense of television news, where reasoned debate was welcome, but shouting and histrionics were not. Where facts were examined, instead of allowing partisans to just make their own "facts" up on the fly. Where experts who weren't telegenic were invited on for lengthy discussions because they were smart and knew what they were talking about -- and not because they looked good in front of the cameras. In other words, everything the modern concept of television news has long since jettisoned in the quest for higher ratings, celebrity gossip, and politicians screaming at each other.

Of course, the show that MacNeil and Lehrer built lives on. And the up-and-coming group of anchors are equally as dedicated to the older, more genteel concept of news. In fact, Lehrer's retirement is not entirely unexpected, as the show has been transitioning to a "rotating anchors" format for the past year or so. And I'll be glad to see Jim every Friday, hashing over the week's politics with Shields and Brooks (or Shields and Some Other Reasonable Righty Commentator), because that has long been the high point of the week on the show.

But I spend so much time excoriating network anchors here in this space for their refusal to perform even the slightest acts of true journalism on a regular basis that I thought Jim Lehrer deserved a special "thank you" for tirelessly doing the job he's been doing so well for so long. His public television show started back when all three of the big networks had anchors with equal seriousness and gravitas, and he may well be the last of that era to grace the airwaves. He stayed constant and consistently good while the broadcast networks changed their attitude towards news from it being a public service that was expected to lose money to it being just like any other television show which lived and died by the ratings. And that was before the advent of 24-hour cable news, even.

So I read today's news with sadness, personally. I'll miss Jim Lehrer on PBS every night, and will continue to watch him regularly on Fridays. The NewsHour will still be the best news on television, and I'll continue to date myself by referring to it in conversation as MacNeil/Lehrer (even though Robert MacNeil retired years ago). The new anchors are already comfortable, due to the transition the show has gone through recently, so it won't really be a shock. But I will miss that voice of "reason, balance, and fairness" on a nightly basis, I have to admit.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant