If today’s media covered the Moon landing — looking back at a baby boomer’s milestone

This is from Slate: a re-imagining of the coverage of the Moon landing on July 20, 1969 if today’s Internet- and cable-TV fueled media could have covered the event. I think it’s fabulous and funny, but I wonder if young people seeing this would go, “and your point is?”

It’s wild to think most of what we accept as part of our media diet today didn’t exist on July 20, 1969 – just three networks’ TV news operations along with their interlaced radio news operations, newspapers across the country (most independently-owned, not corporate networks) and a handful of national weekly magazines. That was all.

I was 11 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon that late Sunday night in Northern Virginia, glued to the TV screen and agog at the fuzzy view of Neil Armstrong gingerly climbing down the steps of the Lunar Module, and then mouthing those now-cliched words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Wow. Am I really 40 years older now?

Here’s the scene as it was covered by the media back in the day, and seen around the world:

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