Internet circa 1994

Here is a video from the Today Show way back in 1994 showing hosts Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbell wrestling with this new fangled thing known as the Internet. The video, which was between show segments, never aired but shows how little journalists initially knew about a technology that would dramatically change journalism. Thanks to Chris Daly from Boston University (via my old professor, Bill McKeen) for sharing it.

Take a Break Driver 8

I was sad to hear the news this week that the members of R.E.M. are folding the band. I'll leave it to those who know far more about music to discuss their legacy. (Bill Wyman has an interesting piece on that subject in Slate.) I just know that for three decades I enjoyed their music tremendously.  I also appreciated that the guys from Athens, Ga., always did things their own way.

Ed and Anderson

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper's new syndicated interview show debuted this week. "Anderson" is being compared to "Oprah" because the daytime show hopes to win the audience that Winfrey left behind when her program went off the air earlier this year.  And Cooper is going after many of the same kind of people that made "Oprah" so monumentally successful. This week's guests include Snooki and Sarah Jessica Parker.

But as an anchor who earned his credentials as a serious journalist, Cooper now has something else in common with that icon of early broadcast news, Edward R. Murrow.  Murrow, who earned his reputation reporting World War II for CBS radio and anchoring "See in Now" for CBS television, had a soft side. Starting in 1953, Murrow hosted a popular interview show, "Person to Person." In many respects, Murrow pioneered interviewing celebrities on television.

During his six years as host, Murrow interviewed such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Bing Crosby, Marilyn Monroe, Harry Truman, John Steinbeck and Lauren Bacall. Smoking cigarette after cigarette, Murrow interviewed the guests in their home from his New York studio. The show was live and since the guests moved around their homes, they wore early wireless microphones.  Murrow's guests often used the show to plug their latest project, something celebrities on "Anderson" no doubt also will be doing.

"Portraits of Grief" Remembered

In reading and watching the stories commemorating the anniversary of 9/11, I'm reminded of all the tremendous work by the news media reporting the terrorists attacks ten years ago. Fortunately for us, the news media often does some of its best work when catastrophic events occur and that certainly was the case after the attacks. The work that has always stood out to me were the "Portraits of Grief" by the New York Times. The little sketches, published over a series of months, captured the lives of more than 2,500 victims. To read them again ten years later is to be reminded of all that was lost on that terrible day, as well as the importance of good journalism when we need it most.

Twain the Reporter

I recently finished reading The Sagebrush Bohemian by Nigey Lennon, an insightful and entertaining account of Mark Twain's formative years as a journalist and writer in the West. The young Twain, still known as Samuel Clemens at the time, moved West to make his fortune as a gold miner but soon turned to journalism to put food on the table. During his years living in Nevada and California, Twain grew from a frontier journalist to a humorist and man of letters.

He wrote initially for the Virginia City (Nevada) Territorial Enterprise, where he earned a reputation as a colorful writer, albeit one who played loose with the facts. Twain's editor soon discovered, in the words of Lennnon, that "his new recruit had a constitutional disregard for factuality. Twain seemed to think he owed to his readers to prevent mundane reality from boring them to death."  The editor put Twain to work spinning tales and he quickly gained a reputation throughout the West.

Twain was offered a position on the San Francisco Morning Call and jumped at the chance to write for a larger audience. At the Morning Call, Twain had to be a real reporter and while he complained about the job, he recognized the advantages. "No other occupation," he wrote later, "brings a man into such familiar sociable relations with all grades and classes of people . . . Why I breakfasted almost every morning with the Governor, dined with the principal clergymen, and slept in the station house."