There's a brutal democracy in media consumption. Metrics show all, whether we're using our smartphones, handling the TV clicker or scrolling dozens of websites. And no chronicler of the early Trump follies is hotter than Stephen Colbert. He's struck a chord and snared folks, like my household, to turn him on each evening (even if there was some inattention after he succeeded David Letterman).

A lot of journalists are now Colbert watchers. They used to be Jon Stewart addicts, which was in part an act of self-flagellation as Stewart derided the pomposity, superficiality and miscues of reporters and pundits. But there was a sense that his media criticism was incisive, if painful.

What is it now about Colbert, the rhythm he's found and what the media might learn? Even with creative competition like host Kevin Spacey, he got kudos for a brief, cutting Trump appearance last night at the Tony Awards while presenting the best revival of a music award. (Hollywood Reporter)

"I guess my thought is that the media can only do so much when the chief executive of the land is trying to delegitimize them," says Kelly Leonard, former longtime Second City artistic director. "That's where Colbert steps in to change the narrative."

Colbert is "finding fresher pathways into Trump mostly by stepping just a little further away from Trump and dialing back the hysteria," says Chris Jones, the Chicago Tribune theater critic.

"He starts with a metaphor, as he did on the Tonys Sunday, and then lets that metaphor collide with Trump," Jones said. "It's subtler and richer and it works better than going after him head-on."

Anne Libera, Leonard's spouse and Colbert's Northwestern University roommate, has a line that "comedy doesn't change the world. But comedy shows you that the world has changed." Colbert, in that regard, is showing us what's next, says Leonard.

"The thing about Stephen is that unlike (Jon) Stewart, he isn't essentially a political animal," says Libera, who helped Colbert get his first job working at the box-office at Chicago's Second City (which enabled him to take courses for free, then flourish and make the troupe). They were both 22.

A further lesson for journalists comes in Colbert's intense interest in language and stories, Libera says, "and even more specifically how our words reveal or betray us. He has also always been fascinated by messiahs (real and false) and then by extension charlatans of all kinds (he was always interested in Mormonism and used to quiz the missionaries who came to Northwestern)."

"All is by way of saying that as incoherent as Trump appears to be sometimes, he also uses words as weapons. He clings to the idea that his power comes from an absolute belief in his own 'winning.' He is a small man who believes that he is in the midst of an epic story."

This all seems tailor-made for a comedian with a fascination with words and epic narratives, said Libera, who teaches at both Second City and at Columbia College Chicago.

Leonard recalls Colbert in the first Second City show he produced, Where's Your God Now, Charlie Brown, in 1992. He's found "Stephen an incredibly good improviser. And to be an incredibly good improviser you have to excel at listening."

"My instinct is that Stephen is listening to a change in the zeitgeist, and he is reflecting that back to the audience. In the same way that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh recognized a fear of displacement in some regions of the public sector and fed their fears and stoked the energy behind their cause, Colbert sees another sector of vox populi that feels a real sense of fear and he provides cultural ammunition for their resistance."