MONDAY MORNING MEDIA (Early snowy edition)

It has been a relief, frankly, to be spared during the past 10 days or so the obsessive coverage of Donald J. Trump that dominated American media for the last four years. We’ve done quite well, thank you, without breathless reporting of nonsensical tweets, wall-to-wall broadcasting of his rallies and penetrating analyses of White House infighting. We don’t even know what Jared and Ivanka have been up to.

This respite will be brief, of course. Once the Senate begins arguments in the trial spawned by Trump’s second impeachment, the headlines will again focus on the 45th President and his actions around January 6. And, no doubt, Maggie Haberman or some other well-sourced observer of the Trump phenomenon will soon give us an inside look at the mood and manners at Mar-a-Lago since January 20. (The most memorable so far: the small plane that flew up and down the beach that day trailing a sign that read: “World’s Worst President!”)

That’s all well and good and as it should be. But I am waiting for the kind of revealing, in-depth reporting of what actually went on during the four-year nightmare known as The Trump Presidency. The best early example is the two-column lead of the January 31 st edition of The New York Times: “As Far-Right Peril Brewed, U.S. Eyed Threat Left.” The subhead explained: “Trump’s insistence on Danger of Antifa Led Federal Officials to Shift Resources.”

Read it and you’ll discover how Trump’s all-out assault on the so-called Radical Left caused boot-licking federal law enforcement officers to look left when the genuine threats were rising on the right. You’ll read how Federal prosecutors and agents felt pressure from the top to uncover a left-wing extremist conspiracy that never materialized. And – no surprise – you’ll learn that Attorney General William P. Barr enthusiastically endorsed the president’s politically inspired attack on the left.

In the coming days and weeks, I expect we’ll read more such shocking inside stories of the behind-the-scene activities of the Trump Administration. The accounts will come out and be confirmed as liberated senior officials and aides feel free to tell us all what really happened at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The stories may not come as a total surprise, but they are history and they are important.

MONDAY MORNING MEDIA

The kerfuffle over The New York Times parting company with journalist Lauren Wolfe after her tweet describing the “chills” she felt as President-elect Biden’s plane landed at Andrews on the eve of the inauguration misses the point. (For the record, The Times maintains that the separation was not the result of her tweet, implying that it had other problems with her performance.)
The problem with her tweet is that her “chills” do not meet the minimum standard of news. The reader doesn’t care about her chills. If another bystander professed to feel chills, that might qualify as a modest bit of color. But Lauren’s chills were beside the point.
The controversy, to the degree it is one, underscores the thorny problems posed by journalists tweeting on the job. First Amendment protections should and do apply, but spare us your chills, Lauren.

Real Change, or a Mirage?

With the late and unlamented 2020 receding from mind and memory, it is tempting to hope that the racial reckoning the country experienced in that not very good year in the wake of the brutal killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and others will bring about real and lasting change in racial attitudes and our national culture.

There is no guarantee, of course, given our long and painful history. The real change hoped for after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the riots and disruptions of the 1960’s and 1970’s largely evaporated in the reactionary 1980’s. Why should the 2020’s be different?

There are some hopeful signs: the reach and impact of the Black Lives Matter and Me, too movements, the greater sensitivity and inclusion in everything from President-elect Joe Biden’s vice presidential and cabinet selections to popular culture, advertising, corporate boardrooms, politics and, finally, believe-it-or-not, media. You see it everywhere, from the profusion of minority anchors on television to the reporters on the beat; from the increasing numbers of African-Americans featured in mass advertising to the promotion of women to the top executive ranks.

One huge breakthrough that got insufficient attention in December, 2020, was the elevation of Rashida Jones, a 39-year-old, African-American television executive to the presidency of MSNBC. As the first Black woman to take charge of a major television news network, Ms. Jones is shattering a glass ceiling and joining a former fraternity that has been almost exclusively White and mostly male. There are notable exceptions, like Susan Zirinsky at the head of CBS News, but they are not the rule.

Rashida Jones rocketed up the executive ranks, producing presidential debates and town halls, overseeing daytime news coverage for MSNBC and breaking news and specials for NBC’s broadcast news divisions. But her selection as president would not have been a given prior to the traumatic racial justice and cultural tumult of 2020. Now it seems natural, appropriate and, if anything, overdue.

Old habits and attitudes die hard, however: The New York Times article announcing her appointment not only was inside the paper at the bottom of a page, the piece devoted most space to the career and favorite pastimes of Phil Griffin, the white male she was replacing. Griffin is a fine fellow, apparently leaving on his own timetable, but really…

Another media breakthrough in late December occurred not among the coastal elites but in Kansas City, where one of the Midwest’s most influential newspapers apologized for decades of racist coverage of its own community. In a striking letter to readers, Mike Fannin, editor of the venerable Kansas City Star, wrote that the newspaper “disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black (note the capitalization) Kansas citizens.” He wrote that the paper had “reinforced Jim Crow law and redlining.” Fannin pointed to the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the firestorm that followed as the impetus for what he promised would be an “honest examination” of the paper’s past in its own pages.

As the readers of The Annapolis Capital read last June when it recalled its own racist writings, The Star was not the first newspaper to re-examine its past performance, but it was impressive nonetheless.

Three months earlier, the publisher of a larger and influential U.S. newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, acknowledged its own “blind spots” on race and promised to openly acknowledge its past biases. Its public apology said the staff was beginning the process of “acknowledging” past biases and promised that its newsroom will not tolerate prejudice. This stood out even in the in the strongly blue, supposedly progressive California.

And, just this week, another change in the media world: the estimable Mark Shields, who stepped down after 33 years from his regular Friday night punditry post opposite David Brooks on The PBS NewsHour, was replaced by Jonathan Capehart, a 53-year-old, Black and openly gay man. Capehart, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial writing at The Washington Post, will give the Friday night feature a different look.

Will the Black Lives Matter and Me, Too movements blossom further in 2021? Will the transformation in the media world and beyond continue?

As they say on television, stay tuned.

An Unsolicited Book Review…

“Disloyal, a Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” by Michael Cohen is a trashy book, written in prison in a trashy, Brooklynese style, by a convicted felon. And yet, especially in its early chapters, it tells the reader a great deal about former President Trump.

Cohen’s central thesis, reinforced again and again over its 300-plus pages, is that the craven, narcissistic, grifter that he worked for on the 26^th floor of the Trump Tower is the exact same person that occupied the Oval Office until Jan. 20, 2021. Trump, he argues, is Trump, then and now.

He is the same Trump that maneuvered endlessly in his Trump Tower days to promote himself in the tabloids and on talk radio and TV. Cohen illustrates his theory with all sorts of inside accounts of the shady “deals” Trump promoted over the years. “Disloyal,” is certainly not literature, but it has the ring of truth. Cohen’s book probably will not change your view of Donald J. Trump; more likely it will reinforce it.

AN UNSOLICITED BOOK REVIEW

Cohen’s central thesis, reinforced again and again over its 300-plus pages, is that the craven, narcissistic, grifter that he worked for on the 26^th floor of the Trump Tower is the exact same person that occupies the Oval Office today. Trump, he argues, is Trump, then and now.

Racing Interruptus

Terence Smith: Sailing through Annapolis’ season of racing interruptus in a 16-foot boat

By Terence Smith

Capital Gazette |

Oct 03, 2020 at 1:00 PM

There are nine Herreshoff 12.5s that sail regularly in Annapolis, lovely, 16-foot, gaff-rigged boats originally designed by the great Nathaniel Herreshoff in 1913. His design of an open-cockpit, full-keel sailboat was — and is — perfect. (Courtesy of Bill Museler / HANDOUT)

It was a tiny victory, in a tiny sailboat, against a tiny fleet, but a satisfying victory, nonetheless.

But the fact that the informal and admittedly insignificant race was being held on a Wednesday afternoon just off the Annapolis Yacht Club and was not organized by the club as part of its longstanding and popular Wednesday Night Racing series tells you something about the impact of the pandemic — and this year’s capricious weather — on the maddeningly frustrating 2020 sailing season.

At its best, this season was Racing Interruptus. Mostly, it didn’t happen at all.

Now, how tiny is tiny? Well, the “fleet” on this afternoon consisted of three Herreshoff 12.5s. They are lovely, 16-foot, gaff-rigged boats originally designed by the great Nathaniel Herreshoff in 1913. His design of an open-cockpit, full-keel sailboat was — and is — perfect. As a result, it has not been changed in 100-plus years. There are scores of them racing up and down the East Coast and a fleet of nine 12.5s that regularly competes in Annapolis.

How tiny was the victory? Well, here’s how it went: with Jana Davis, executive director of The Chesapeake Bay Trust, calling tactics, I steered Dear Prudence, my 1994 Herreshoff 12.5, to a good start just off AYC and pulled well ahead of the other two boats in the race on the first leg. As we approached the turning mark near the far shore, I said to Jana, “Look at that current, it’s rushing past the mark.”

Did I do anything to compensate for the current? No, instead I cut the mark too close to port and was promptly caught in the current and pushed within an arm’s length of the mark. Poor Dear Prudence got caught in the current and spun around 360-degrees while the other boats passed us and turned for home. We rounded the mark a second time and followed in the wake of the others. For a life-long sailor, it was a mortifying moment.

A spirited tacking duel followed as we beat to windward on the long leg to the finish. We slowly caught the other boats and matched them tack-for-tack. At the very last moment, in a classic example of dumb luck, we shot across the finish line first! We won by half a boat length.

Herreshoff 12.5s are an open-cockpit, full-keel sailboat. It has not been changed in 100-plus years. There are scores of them racing up and down the East Coast and a fleet of nine 12.5s that regularly competes in Annapolis. - Original Credit: — Herreshoff 12.5s are an open-cockpit, full-keel sailboat. It has not been changed in 100-plus years. There are scores of them racing up and down the East Coast and a fleet of nine 12.5s that regularly competes in Annapolis. – Original Credit: (Courtesy of Bill Museler / HANDOUT)

That is what I mean by a satisfying victory: pulling it from the jaws of defeat after a boneheaded blunder at the turning mark.

A “normal” Wednesday Night Race series offers two dozen weekly races between April and September and turns out 100-plus boats in various classes and sizes from the little Herreshoffs to big, powerful racing yachts. On a nice evening with a decent breeze, it is a gorgeous spectacle that often concludes at the bar in the yacht club or the Boatyard Bar and Grill where videos of the race are run repeatedly.

But there was nothing normal about this year. Thanks to the pandemic and restrictions imposed by the governor, the whole season started six weeks late and even then most classes initially raced every other week to avoid congestion. In addition, the hot, sticky weather in July and August produced threatening thunderstorms on Wednesday evenings with uncanny regularity. The race committee had no choice but to cancel at the last hour again and again.

When the season concluded on Sept. 2, the Herreshoff class, for example, managed only seven races instead of 24. Bummer.

Pandemics and the weather are obviously beyond the control of the AYC Race Committee. Given the continuing threat of COVID 19, and the heat and humidity intensified by climate change, the 2021 season may be no better than the sadly unsatisfying 2020 debacle.

So, here is my suggestion: why not extend the season and schedule make-up races on weekends? The Herreshoff class has been holding its informal races, on Wednesdays during September, with makeups on Thursdays and may soon schedule them on weekends in October.

The Annapolis Yacht Club Race Committee could do something similar and the beautiful waters off Annapolis would once again look as Annapolis should look, pandemic or no.

Terence Smith, journalist and sailor, lives in Annapolis. His website is terencefsmith.com He can be reached at terencefsmith2@gmail.com

Whither the Newsroom?

The beleaguered, diminished editorial staff of The Annapolis Capital Gazette – a daily so old that it printed the Declaration of Independence – observed Labor Day with a cavalcade and rally protesting the decision of its publisher, The Tribune Company, to close its newsroom permanently.

“A Car is Not a Newsroom,” read one reporter’s sign, “We deserve better,” read another, “Save Local News” was a third.

“We’re not leaving without a fight,” said Selene San Felice, a Capital reporter, out on the street in front of her locked former office, conceding that there was no chance The Tribune Company would reverse its cost-conscious decision. Her concern, and that of other staffers, is that more cuts are coming.

When the Washington Post reported on the plans to close the newsrooms of the Capital and four other of Tribune’s local papers, the subhead asked an intriguing question: “What’s a Newspaper without a Newsroom?”

The Post piece noted that, in addition to The Tribune, the financially troubled McClatchy Company “took steps to close seven of its newspaper offices around the country.” Again, not temporarily because of the virus, but permanently.

The pattern is pretty hard to miss, and it certainly caught my eye. It was just the latest sign of the precipitous decline in advertising and revenue that has shuttered 2,100 newspapers across the country since 2005. It is also an example of the hard-headed, bottom line calculations imposed by the vulture capital firms that are acquiring and systematically bleeding the assets of scores of papers all over the country.

But still, the question: what is a newspaper without a newsroom?

In a nearly five-decade career in daily journalism I worked in three newspaper newsrooms and three network and public television newsrooms.

The first was a noisy, wooden-floored, high-ceilinged space on the second floor of The Stamford Advocate in Stamford, CT. There was a semi-circular news desk and the clatter of stand-up Remington typewriters.

The second and by far the most filthy and romantic, was the city room of The New York Herald Tribune on 41st Street. The vast room had no air conditioning, so the tall windows were left open night and day in the summer and the Manhattan grit crunched under your shoes as you arrived for work. But I loved it. And, look who labored at the desks near you: Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Charles Portis and a dozen other rising stars. You didn’t have to look far for inspiration.

The third was the sprawling newsroom of The New York Times, an imposing, block-wide space between 43rd and 44th Street in those days, filled with Pulitzer winners, veteran shoe-leather reporters and cranky editors. David Halberstam was just back from the jungles of Vietnam, Gay Talese was on his way to a celebrated literary career and Harrison Salisbury was headed to Moscow. In the newsroom, your colleagues shared stories, gossip, advice and got your competitive and creative juices flowing.

The Washington and New York newsrooms of CBS News were filled in the 1980’s and ‘90’s with bold-faced names like Cronkite and Rather. They were mostly open, but a glass-walled section was called the NUB, short for Next Up Broadcast. The pace inside the NUB was intense, bordering on frantic, especially as 6:30 p.m. approached, broadcast time for the live CBS Evening News. A young producer, Susan Zirinsky, was a human whirlwind. Today, she is president of CBS News. Again, the newsroom was a place where you could share ideas and subject your own story proposals to critical review by your colleagues.

My final newsroom, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, now simply The PBS NewsHour, was, like the broadcast itself, more low key, measured and serious. The news mattered here, not ratings. It was housed in a dreary, two-story building in Shirlington, Va, just across the Potomac from Washington. The quarters were cramped, but we put on a reliable, responsible, hour-long newscast that reached a million or more discerning viewers each night. (The self-deprecating slogan among the staff: “We Dare to be Dull.” Today’s PBS NewsHour, with Judy Woodruff at the helm, is brighter and better.) Once again, the newsroom was the womb from which it all sprang.

The five soon-to-be-homeless Tribune papers are The Annapolis Capital Gazette, The Carroll County Times of Westminster, MD, The Morning Call of Allentown, PA, the Orlando Sentinel and, believe it or not, The New York Daily News.

The Daily News was once the largest circulation newspaper in the country, selling 2.4 million copies every day in the 1960’s. It’s newsroom in The News Building on E. 42nd Street had a huge globe dominating its lobby. It was so iconic, so clearly big time, it was used as the set of the Daily Planet in the Superman films. Today: The Daily News sells 200,000 copies on a good day and the newsroom is gone.

All these papers were the product of the collaboration, cooperation and inspiration that emerged from the collective creation of their newsrooms. Now they will all be permanently “remote,” emerging online from the homes and computers and cellphones of their staffers. Reporters will be filing from their cars.

Can it work? Absolutely. The Capital and and others have demonstrated that during the pandemic shutdown, working remotely and delivering first rate work to their readers. The extraordinary reporting of The New York Times and Washington Post on the Trump foibles of the last six months has all been done remotely.

Will it save the companies money? Of course.

Will it be the same – and as good? Absolutely not.

Our Imperial Presidency

Mark it down: April was when the wheels finally came off the Trump bandwagon.

After weeks of rambling, largely incoherent performances in the daily White House coronavirus briefings, punctuated by assaults on the media generally and individual reporters occasionally, President Donald Trump went into total meltdown on Thursday, April 23. That was when he mused, in spontaneous free-association, about the possible merits of ingesting disinfectants and projecting sunlight and ultraviolet light into the body to counteract the virus.

“I’m not a doctor,” he said, belaboring the obvious and tapping his temple, “but I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what.” Even for a “very stable genius,” as the President has described himself in the past, it was an extraordinary moment. Sitting off to one side, Deborah Birx, who is a doctor and the coronavirus response coordinator, was a study in self-restraint as she looked down at her hands folded in her lap.

In the momentary silence that followed, you could almost feel White House aides, Trump supporters and Republicans around the country cringing. This time, the President had strayed into clearly dangerous, life-threatening territory with no obvious escape route. This time, his Teflon coating had failed to protect him.

Even President Trump realized his blunder. The next day, he cut the White House briefing short and walked out without taking any questions; the next day he tweeted that he was too busy to attend the briefing. But by Monday, he was back in the limelight.

“You know, I can’t really explain it,” Maryland’s Republican Governor Larry Hogan said on one of the Sunday shows when asked about the President’s Thursday comments. Hogan, who has been careful and measured in his own statements on the virus, added: “It does send a wrong message…when you just say something that pops into your head.”

That is apparently what the President did. Aides reported later that he had attended part of a technical briefing just before the news conference on the impact of bleach and other disinfectants and sunlight on the virus. No one was suggesting this as a medical treatment for humans, but Trump took it there in his comments, urging the medical experts to test whether it could kill the virus in people.

You would not expect anyone to take this wacky idea seriously, but calls to state and local medical departments about it spiked in the immediate aftermath of the President’s off-the-cuff remarks.

The whole incident underscores a more fundamental question: why is this President — really, any President — briefing the nation on such a vital, highly complicated, public health issue as the Covid 19 pandemic? The answer in this case, of course, is that everything President Trump does is about President Trump. In this locked-down, socially-distant world, he is not able to hold the big, noisy political rallies that he enjoys so much. The daily briefings have been the substitute, an opportunity to lie, exaggerate and mislead, while making wildly-inflated claims about his Administration’s performance.

Instead, the nation should be briefed by medical and public health officials, who actually know what they are talking about, and who should be in a position to make the crucial decisions on testing and managing the pandemic that only the Federal government can make. Drs. Anthony Fauci and Birx have played that role, but only as supporting players to the President, who remains front and center.

Such is the consequence of our imperial presidency. As Congress has ceded more and more power to the executive in recent decades, we have created an impossibly demanding role for the President, any President. The man in the Oval Office — so far, all 45 have been men — is called upon to decide war and peace and, in the case of the corona virus, life and death.

No one, man or woman, can fulfill this limitless role. No one person can be the decider-in-chief on everything. Perhaps, in the wake of this virus, the nation can re-balance: Congress can reassert itself and the professional civil service can be given greater responsibility and authority in crises where expertise is crucial.

Perhaps.

Corona Down Under

It was a simple, uncomplicated idea: three weeks in summery Australia at the dreary end of the U.S. winter, a long overdue visit with my son, Chris, his wife, Kerri, and two of my three granddaughters, Scout and Saylor, who are living in Brisbane, Queensland, for two-three years for his work. I hadn’t seen any of them in 15 months.
What could go wrong?

The flight over was long, God knows it was long, but mercifully uneventful. A mere 30 hours after leaving Annapolis, Maryland, I was deposited by Virgin Australia into the Brisbane airport at 6 a.m. the next day, or the day after that, who could possibly know which after a cross-country flight to LAX, crossing the international date line and a 13-hour leap to sunny Brisbane? Through my comatose fog, I heard my son say we were off for three days to Noosa, a breathtakingly beautiful beach and national park a couple of hours both of Brisbane on the aptly named Sunshine Coast. Swimming and surfing and eating and sipping commenced, more or less non-stop, for the next 72 hours. The weather was perfect, there were Koalas in the eucalyptus trees, probably sharks and other deadly things in the warm, soothing water, and an 80-mile-long deserted beach on which my son let his 9 and 11-year-old daughters violate all local laws and common sense by driving his four-wheeled SUV at lunatic speeds through the silky sand. No one turned an eye as we went by. When in Noosa.. .

The next two weeks in Brisbane were a delightful blur: lunches with Chris in the glass-and-steel, high-rise central business district, which gives Brisbane its derisive nickname, Bris-Vegas; rides on the City Cat ferry up and down the wide Brisbane river, a couple of strolls along the cleverly-designed Southbank, with its museums, Ferris wheel and rain-forest walk (really.) A couple of rounds at the Bulimba Golf Club, which features pig racing with pari-mutual betting on Sundays and one round at the hilly Victoria Park Golf Course, with spectacular views of the downtown skyline.

Evenings featured kid things: an almost professionally-run, weekly junior swim meet, with, mercifully, beer, wine and food for sale to the parents and grandparents, especially the grand parents; two sixth-grade basketball matches, silly games of HORSE with the girls on the basketball court in the neighborhood park, that sort of thing.

There were a couple of fun weekend trips to the Gold Coast and, on the Sunshine Coast, the wonderfully-named Mooloolaba Triathalon, where parents and children, thousands of them, biked, ran and swam along a beautiful beach. Important information: the crispy salmon at the Mooloolaba Surf Cub (temporary membership free when we were there) is outstanding. Don’t miss it on your next trip to Mooloolaba.

MEANWHILE, the world was tuning on its axis , making a mess, as usual, Biden was up, Bernie was down, everybody else was gone, Super-Tuesday seemed to cement it, but there were Joe and Bernie debating one Sunday night (Monday morning for us) on CNN, to no discernible consequence. AND, from China, and South Korea, Iran and Italy, of all places, came reports of some virus thing. Trump said not to worry, but I was down under and Australia does a lot of business with China, with a great deal of travel between the two nations, so I did worry a bit, despite the President’s cavalier dismissal of the whole fuss. The Australian government’s not-inspired response to the crisis was to quarantine the returnees from China on Christmas Island, off the south coast, for 15 days.

THEN, all hell broke loose, especially on the airwaves and internet. Quarantines, national shutdowns, travel bans, schools, bars and restaurants closed, businesses shuttered, people told to stay at home in Europe and, gradually, the U.S. President Trump finally realized this virus thing is not going to go away and may, annoyingly, be serious. From my home of Annapolis, MD, comes word of a general shutdown! Not down under. Australia initially barred gatherings larger than 500, but the schools , restaurants and businesses remained open. Life goes on. How long before Australia catches up?

I was scheduled to fly home on Virgin Australia (great food on board,) when country after country was closing its doors. No one was moving. I went to the Brisbane Airport and indeed, it was unusually quiet. BUT, my flight to Los Angeles, connecting to Washington DC, was packed. A long, anxious line of hopeful passengers snaked around the boarding gate. These were Americans, not sure they would get home at all if they didn’t get out of town. The passengers had cut short cruises, tours and personal travel to return home while the returning was still possible. To a passenger, they were concerned that Trump was going to shut them out and air travel to the U.S. would be suspended. As a result, the flight was virtually full, prompting me to pony up for Business Class, where the three-course lunch comes with a crisp Chardonnay and a lovely, light New Zealand Pinot Noir is served with the cheese course. Eight hours later, coffee and crumpets for breakfast. This may be a world-wide crisis, but there is no reason to suffer.
When our Virgin Australia 777-300 ER (Extended Range) landed at LAX, we were shuffled through immigration and customs by officials wearing masks and gloves and sent to the Delta Customer Service desk to rebook on-going flights since the Virgin flight was nearly two hours late and most connections had been missed. For me, instead of a direct flight to Washington and home, I won the prize of a stop in Detroit.

When I finally reached Reagan National, it was 7:15 p.m. on March 18, the same day I had departed Brisbane 36 hours and four airports before, and the terminal was deserted. The Uber driver told me on the way to Annapolis that everything was shut down, bars and restaurants closed, Washington’s famous rush hour was a thing of the past. “I haven’t been in a traffic jam all week,” he said glumly, almost as though he missed it.

The moment I arrived home, my wife, Susy, made me launder all my clothes and shower from head to foot. I then began a self-quarantine that continues to this day, mostly staying home and walking the dogs.
Frankly, it was more fun in Australia.

Remembering Jim Lehrer

Let me tell you a brief story about Jim Lehrer, the longtime anchor of The PBS NewsHour, who died yesterday in his sleep at 85. The story illustrates his integrity and his commitment to news and fairness.

When he invited me to join The NewsHour in 1998, it was to establish and anchor something new: the Media Unit that would report and analyze the news and the way it is reported to the American people. Jim believed that news about the news IS news and should be covered as such. He was prepared to devote a portion of his broadcast to it and had even secured a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts to fund it.

The grant was for three years and lasted for seven, precisely because Jim backed it all the way. He never wavered from his conviction that it was important, even crucial, for the news to be presented honestly, fairly and with respect for the intelligence of his viewers. He might have called it “Fair and Balanced,” had another organization not co-opted that phrase.

I came to the NewsHour from decades in the news business, at The New York Times and CBS News, two fine organizations. From the first morning meeting at the NewsHour, I discovered that Jim and his former partner, Robin MacNeil, had created a culture at their broadcast that was special. The news and truth came first. It would be presented fairly and honestly. Every day. It was not a competition for ratings and eyeballs. It was more important than that. Did we “Dare to be dull” at times? Guilty as charged. Did we make mistakes? Of course.

Integrity was the key word. And it still is. That was Jim — and Robin’s — gift. To everyone.

Back in 2001, Jim was quoted in the American Journalism as follows:

“I have an old-fashioned view that news is not a commodity. News is information that is required in a democratic society, and Thomas Jefferson said a democracy is dependent on an informed citizenry. That sounds corny, but it is the truth.”

Amen, Jim.