Award Recipients

NBC's Tom Brokaw 2002 Paul White Award Recipient

NATIVE SON

South Dakota native Tom Brokaw has made his mark covering politics and world events for 40 years, the last 19 as anchor of NBC Nightly News. He'll be honored for his lifetime achievements when he receives the 2002 Paul White Award this month at RTNDA@NAB.

By Mark Millage for April 2002 Communicator

U.S. Highway 81 runs north-south through the heart of America, stretching well beyond the Mexican and Canadian borders. Most people know it as the Pan-American Highway. But, to the residents of Yankton, SD, the ribbon of concrete running through downtown is affectionately-and officially-called Tom Brokaw Boulevard. It's a fitting tribute to their favorite son who keeps the country connected on a nightly basis.

Tom Brokaw is a product of the prairie. He spent his childhood criss-crossing South Dakota, living on a Black Hills army base during World War II, later along the Missouri River as his father built dams with the Army Corps of Engineers, finally settling downstream in Yankton where young Tom started his own career. It was 1956; he was a sophomore in high school, and KYNT radio gave Brokaw the chance to pursue his passion for broadcasting and politics.

"We were covering the election in 1956, Dwight Eisenhower's second term," Brokaw recalls. "I was racing around the various precincts to report on them. And the newspaper could only write the results on a chalkboard outside the building at 1 o'clock in the morning. We were on the air and I thought, 'This is great. If people want to know what's going on, they just tune in.'

"The moment of truth for me was the 1960 election. I watched Huntley-Brinkley all night long until 8 o'clock in the morning. It was a very close election, and I thought, 'God, I would love to do something like that at some point in my life.' I was a political science major working in radio and television stations at that point. And, that kind of steered me in that direction."

During his time at the University of South Dakota, Brokaw took his first television job at KTIV-TV in Sioux City, IA. After graduation, he was lured to the bright lights of Omaha, NE, where KMTV offered a $6,000 salary to anchor its morning cut-ins. Brokaw is still grateful for the many first-time opportunities he had there, including his first taste of national politics covering Hubert Humphrey and Barry Goldwater.

The decision to post a "situations wanted" ad through RTNDA quickly changed the course of Brokaw's career. WSB-TV, the powerhouse NBC affiliate in Atlanta, called and wanted Brokaw to anchor its 11 p.m. newscast, promising to double his pay.

"To this day," Brokaw chuckles, "I have no idea what the people of Atlanta must have thought to see this boyish Yankee suddenly show up doing the news."

Brokaw had a brief but successful run in Atlanta. There were many long days and even longer nights. Often after finishing a late newscast, he would travel through the night to cover the civil rights movement. Many of Brokaw's reports aired on NBC. Within six months, the network wanted to move him to Los Angeles. After some initial resistance, he accepted the offer to report and anchor on Sunday nights at KNBC-TV.

Points East
The year was 1966. Just four years out of school, Brokaw had already developed his reputation as a knowledgeable political reporter. So the powers-that-be decided to assign their new hire to the California governor's race.

"They said, 'We're going to put you on the campaign of this actor who's running for governor,'" Brokaw recalls, "'because we don't think he's going to get the nomination.' So, I was early on the bus with Ronald Reagan."

Brokaw was on the fast track. The anchoring load increased. And soon there were network assignments: George McGovern's campaign for president, subbing for Garrick Utley on newsmagazines, and covering the political conventions of 1968 and 1972.

"I remember John Chancellor at the '72 convention saying to me, 'It's time for you to move east and be a grownup, Brokaw.'"

He grew up fast. In 1973, NBC named Brokaw White House correspondent, which immediately thrust him into the frontline of Watergate. But, it was another battlefront at the time that, to this day, remains a career void in Brokaw's mind.

"My only regret during that time is that I should have gone to Vietnam," Brokaw says. "I missed seeing that story from that vantage point. Most of my friends, and certainly my wife, say 'you haven't missed anything, Tom.'

"I've been everywhere else-the Persian Gulf, Beirut, Nicaragua, Somalia-I haven't missed many. 'Black Hawk Down' brought back a lot of memories about how wild that place (Somalia) was. In Beirut, you never knew what was around the next corner. A lot of times I had guns poked up against my ear. Rockets that went off nearby. But, you know, that was just part of the running risk."

Moving to the Today show in 1976, then to Nightly News in 1983, didn't stop Brokaw from pursuing his first love-reporting at every opportunity. "One of the things that I always had to kind of fight," he says, "is that I really wanted to be a correspondent. Because I had certain studio skills, I kept getting stuck in the studio."

Through the years, Brokaw has been center-stage for most of the big stories of our generation: from Watergate to the Challenger explosion to the terrorist attacks of September 11. And, Brokaw has amassed an impressive list of exclusives: from the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa to the first interview with Mikhail Gorbachev to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

"I guess what I'm proudest of at this stage in my life is that I've been in the middle of some very big, complicated, controversial, explosive stories of great consequence," Brokaw says. "And I managed to get the story right, get it in the appropriate context, advance the understanding of the people who were watching us, and keep my integrity intact. And, I think that's probably what I'm most pleased about.

"But, I also know that you have to go out and do that every day on big stories and small. Because it's not an overstatement to say that a journalist has, most of all, his or her reputation and very little else to go on. I don't have the skills of a surgeon or a dentist or a good carpenter or a plumber. What I have is a reputation for integrity and fairness and a certain amount of ability to take big, complex stories and put them in a form so the public understands what's going on, and also gets from my reporting what they need to make decisions about their lives."

Getting Things Right
As anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, and a veteran of elections now spanning six decades, Brokaw is a stickler for accuracy. The mistakes of Election 2000 still concern him.

"I liken it to a big, impressive-looking car barreling down the freeway," he says, "and then all of a sudden smoke starts to emerge from under the hood. The wheels are badly out of alignment and the whole hydraulic system begins to come apart, and it kind of careens into the median and then staggers off to the side of the road. And it turns out not to be the finely tuned machine we thought it was both within the election process and within the newsgathering and projection process of the networks."

How to fix it? For several years, Brokaw has publicly advocated a national voting weekend in November, a 36-hour period when all the polls open and close simultaneously. People would cast their ballot wherever they happen to be, using an ATM-like card. Brokaw envisions that "all the election returns would come in at once, and we'd all make the calls at the same time. There'd be a real spirit of participation."

He is distressed by the disconnect between this country's people and what's going on in Washington. In equal parts, Brokaw blames politicians who "don't want to change the system that got them there" and journalists for "a big game of 'gotcha,' instead of an examination of the issues and the real character that counts in public office."

Brokaw turned 62 in February; an age when many contemplate retirement. But he seems in no hurry to leave the anchor desk, in part because of the events of September 11.

"I thought I would be winding down a little bit at this stage of my career," Brokaw confesses. "But I have found that I am working even harder. And I am happy to be working harder because the issues are serious and people are paying attention. It's a big and important story. I've been energized physically, intellectually and professionally by it."

No doubt, he was unnerved by it, too. Soon after the attack, an assistant opened a letter addressed to Brokaw that contained white powder. Initial anthrax tests were negative, leaving Brokaw and others at NBC frustrated.

"A combination of the FBI, public health people and so on refused to believe it was anthrax, and we were demanding additional tests," he explains. "It took up to two weeks before it finally got confirmed, and it was a nightmare, but very instructive about how unprepared the country was for that kind of bio-terrorism attack."

The experience put Brokaw in an unusual and uncomfortable position, making news rather than simply reporting it.

"It was a difficult time, and then to have to go on the air and describe it all. I did that only because you do have a personal relationship with your audience, and I knew they would want to know how I felt. And I felt that they deserved to know that." He observes, "Things did change on September 11. If you live in New York, it's a real hole in your soul."

Brokaw sees a more serious mood in the country, with public attention refocused on foreign events. And he believes Nightly News is keeping up with the changing times.

"I've gone back and looked at the old Huntley-Brinkley and the old Nightly News. They were very solid, but sometimes they were pretty boring." He adds, "Now they (viewers) have a lot more choices, so we have to compete in a different way." One way is through broader coverage of the issues. Another is with a more diverse workforce. Brokaw says that in the past "Nightly News was seen through the filter of white, middle-aged men from the eastern seaboard. That's changed."

Looking Forward
But the image on screen for roughly two decades has been that of the same three, white men vying for the same shrinking pool of viewers. It's been Brokaw, Rather and Jennings, and speculation of their successors has long been fodder for the trades.

What becomes of traditional network news when they all decide to call it a career?

"I don't know. I think that's a very good question," Brokaw concedes. "We've taken the public through a hell of a lot of change in the last 20 years. So, if we disappear from that screen at the same time, it's going to make it tougher for our successors because the audience has a lot of other places they can go. But, by no means do I think that the three of us are the three stakes holding up this tent."

Brokaw already has a remarkably successful second career as an author. He notes, "The phrase 'The Greatest Generation' now is part of the language. The New York Times doesn't even put quotes around it anymore."

And, Brokaw is an accomplished mountain climber who has seen the world from unique vantage points like Tibet, Nepal, Patagonia, the Russian Far East and throughout the American West. "You're never more alive than when you do those kind of things," he says, "because it's the ultimate test about resourcefulness and the ability to manage fear and manage risk."

One challenge he'll pass on is politics. "I [once] did this 'day in the life of the White House,' and had a wonderful time doing it. But," explains Brokaw, "my quick phrase is I'm running for cover, not for public office. I want more of a private life than a public life."

Being honored as the 2002 recipient of the Paul White Award is also a little daunting, he says. "I've reached the age where I'm now eligible for it. It's been a great, great career. I've been witness to so much change. I have no complaints. I've been luckier than I deserve to have been. I can't look back and say 'Oh, God, if I'd only done that it would have been better.' It's just impossible for it to be better."

-Mark Millage is past chairman of RTNDA and news director at KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, SD.