British Invasion Reshuffles U.S. Media
On Thursday night, the host of “The Daily Show†riffed on Paula Deen's liberal use of both butter and racial slurs, chatted about journalism with Tom Brokaw and parodied the gangster code of honor that has been in the news in the Whitey Bulger trial. Along the way, he did a honey-dripped Southern accent and dropped into a Cagney-esque wiseguy voice.
John Oliver, who is hosting “The Daily Show†this summer, is one of many British imports gaining visibility in American media.
None of that is totally surprising for a talented entertainer raised in Birmingham, except the town that John Oliver grew up in is in England, not Alabama, and he is a big fan of Liverpool Football Club, not the Crimson Tide.
Mr. Oliver is filling in for Jon Stewart, who is directing a film this summer. We could dwell on the oddity of a British comedian replacing the host of a deeply American show, except that everywhere you look in the United States media landscape, you find people from that small island.
Piers Morgan came from Britain to take over for Larry King, The Wall Street Journal is edited by Gerard Baker, a British newspaper veteran, and the chief executive of The New York Times is Mark Thompson, who spent his career at the BBC. Anna Wintour has edited Vogue for more than two decades and, more recently, Joanna Coles took over Cosmopolitan, which defines a certain version of American womanhood.
NBC News recently looked to the mother country for leadership and found Deborah Turness, the former editor of Britain's ITV News. ABC's entertainment group is headed by Paul Lee, also formerly of the BBC, and Colin Myler, a Fleet Street alum, edits The New York Daily News.
The list goes on, but the point is made: when it comes to choosing someone to steer prominent American media properties, the answer is often delivered in a proper British accent.
The observation about the thicket of British talent has been made elsewhere and is hardly a brand new phenomenon - it's Tina Brown's and Nick Denton's world, we just surf it. But something is at work here, beyond the joke about a British accent adding 10 I.Q. points.
The easy answer is the triumph of British charm and politeness set against American brashness and confrontation. I actually think it is exactly the opposite. As Geoff Dyer wrote in The Times in 2009, Americans strive, underneath the loutishness, to be liked, while the British care more about being right.
If that's so, then the renewed British invasion on our shores makes sense because media are becoming more competitive and less mannered with each passing day. Apart from the fact that Mr. Oliver is a very funny man, “The Daily Show†continues to storm along partly because, like Mr. Stewart, Mr. Oliver suspects everyone and everything and says so aloud.
It's a very British way of thinking. The one question all young reporters on Fleet Street are taught to keep foremost in their mind when interviewing public figures can be best paraphrased as, “Why is this jerk lying to me?â€
The news that flows from that mind-set is often far more interesting than American media, which frequently bow to power even as they seek to hold it accountable. (Mr. Stewart, so rapacious when annotating video clips, often goes soft when confronted by an actual interview.)
Other dynamics are at play as well. The dividing line between the business and editorial side in British journalism has always been thin, and those who rise to the top have a good grasp of numbers. That's a characteristic that is increasingly prized in corporate America. And an endless supply of talent is seeking to leave the crab pot of British news media because they want to work on a larger scale.
Ms. Coles is a former reporter at The Times of London who came to work in the United States for The Guardian before going to New York Magazine. She went on to More magazine, Marie Claire and now runs Cosmopolitan.
I crossed paths with her when we both worked at New York Magazine, where she stuck out for reasons other than her accent. To wit: while the rest of us would nod assent when senior editors spoke, she frequently argued points to the point of impertinence.
“I was taken aside and asked why I was doing that and I said, ‘Doing what?' †she recalled when I spoke to her last week. From her perspective, she was doing what all good journalists do, which is pushing back.
E-mail:carr@nytimes.com;
Twitter: @carr2n
A version of this article appeared in print on June 24, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: British Invasion Reshuffles U.S. Media.