If you are under the age of 45 or 50, 60 Minutes has always been a newsmagazine institution. It’s not part of the establishment, exactly. But it’s a part of the political landscape that delivers a sometimes awkward mix of hard-hitting investigative pieces side-by-side with puffy profiles and lifestyle stories.

While I think she is absolutely the wrong person to lead the effort, I agree that the culture of 60 Minutes needed to be substantially shaken up. And the best way to see how the show has evolved since its earliest years and how its approach has often calcified into “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” is by watching the 2019 documentary Mike Wallace Is Here.

The documentary follows the long and complex life of Mike Wallace, someone who didn’t begin his career as a journalist. But who learned that he had the ability to ask the tough questions most other journalists would dance around. When Don Hewitt launched 60 Minutes, both he and Wallace were near outcasts at CBS News because they didn’t fit into the culture of the CBS News division.

60 Minutes struggled early on, but found success when the show leaned into coverage of the various threads in the Watergate story. Wallace seems to have interviewed nearly every major figure in the scandal short of the President and made news by using his impressive interviewing skills to wrangle answers out of reluctant and often belligerent interviewees.

There is a lot in this documentary that resonates strongly in 2026. Lawsuits that threatened to shut down the show, government claims the show was slanted and fake news. As well as concerns that the public was losing trust in journalism.

Mike Wallace had a complex personal life, including the death of his adult son (just a horrifying story), battles with depression and a failed suicide attempt. Director Avi Belkin got access to 1,200 hours of 60 Minutes footage and was able to use some of Wallace’s 60 Minutes colleagues to ask him the difficult questions.

The result is a film that says a lot about one of television’s greatest journalists. But also a great deal about why 60 Minutes matters. And why this current reinvention might be the wrong way to go.