The attack that injured ABC “World News Tonight” co-anchor Bob Woodruff and his photographer, Doug Vogt, in Iraq brought media glare on the 44-year-old Woodruff as never before.
His face was splashed on newspaper covers, and wire services updated editors frequently on his and Vogt’s medical progress. Cable news aired live coverage of their transfer from Germany to the United States.
For many Americans this was their introduction to Woodruff, a productive but not exactly famous ABC correspondent who was promoted to co-anchor alongside Elizabeth Vargas in December. They succeeded Peter Jennings, who died of lung cancer last fall.
What surprised many observers was that an evening news anchor would be on a treacherous road outside Baghdad, shooting a news story. It sounded, frankly, like something Woodruff would be doing had he not gotten the “World News Tonight” assignment.
But road duty has become part of the job description for network news anchors. With the promotion of Woodruff, ABC was simply raising the ante.
In the month before he was wounded, he had already read the news from Israel twice, as well as the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Iran and Google headquarters in California. His co-anchor, Vargas, has also been to Iraq, though it seems she’s in New York more often than Woodruff.
In an appearance before TV critics the previous week, ABC News president David Westin said Woodruff and Vargas should be thought of, not just as anchors, but “anchor-reporters.” Westin called this a fundamental change at ABC, having “the anchor as (both) anchor and reporter out in the field.”
Woodruff even suggested that Jennings would have approved.
“Peter said to me when he was alive, “You know, this is a difficult job because I’m not able to get out and report the stories in the field the way that I love to do them,”‘ Woodruff said. “Now, not only because of technology but because of having another anchor that can be back in New York … you’re going to see a lot more of this.”
Whether Jennings would have been delighted to do so much reporting while continuing to manage a news program, we can only speculate. But on the other matter, there is no doubt: This is a major shift in the way ABC does the news. And if it works, there will doubtless be more peripatetic anchor-reporters assigned to circle the globe, putting themselves in harm’s way with far greater frequency.
The same transformation has already taken place at “Nightline,” which since Ted Koppel’s retirement has turned from a staid discussion of a single topic into a hurly-burly of reports. Three anchor-reporters, Martin Bashir, Terry Moran and Cynthia McFadden, jockey for the 22 minutes of airtime that Koppel used to have all to himself.
Over at NBC, Brian Williams has stepped up his pace as well. In recent months he has anchored the “NBC Nightly News” in front of the White House, in Detroit, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, even the Billy Graham Crusade. He has visited New Orleans and the Gulf Coast repeatedly to survey hurricane damage and rebuilding efforts. He has joked, half ruefully, that his teenaged children know him only as that man who stays with them between trips to the airport.
What all these machinations have in common is a shift away from the authoritative single anchor, projecting authority and wisdom from his command post in New York.
These changes have not gone unnoticed at CBS, where the company’s chairman, Leslie Moonves, is said to be wooing “Today” show host Katie Couric. Moonves has already said he’d be willing to try multiple anchors on the “CBS Evening News” and has declared flatly he won’t hire another old-fashioned, “voice of God” anchor again.
While all these anchor changes are under way, more attention should be paid to the travesty behind the scenes: an almost criminal depletion of network news operations through cost-cutting and layoffs.
According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, foreign bureaus have been cut in half at all three networks since the 1980s. The average network has 44 correspondents, seven fewer than in 1996, despite the wake-up call of 9-11.
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These ugly little truths came to light most recently when Andy Rooney brought them up on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
Rooney, who thinks interim “CBS Evening News” anchor Bob Schieffer should get the job permanently, said that instead of paying Couric $20 million a year, the network “could buy 40 reporters … have them everywhere. Open up the bureaus we used to have in Buenos Aires and Warsaw, Poland. … Open those up again with that $20 million. Katie will be all right without it.”
For once, Rooney has offered a quixotic proposal worth listening to. After all, the ratings for “CBS Evening News” have been climbing since the temp took over. It’s old-school, but with a new beat. Schieffer loves to quiz his reporters, and it shows. Not only that, you actually learn something on CBS when the anchor anchors and the reporters report.
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It’s something Bob Woodruff’s employers should think about during these long months while he recovers from his war wounds. Whatever Woodruff decides about his future, ABC is almost certainly going to rubber-stamp his decision.
But his employers should also admit that he was promoted, in part, because it saved the network from having to hire another employee. An anchor-reporter sounds like someone you’d see on cable news or local news. Networks not only can do better, but with the money they still make on news, they should do better.
ABC could honor Woodruff and Vogt by hiring two new correspondents. They could honor their viewers by hiring even more.
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Aaron Barnhart can be reached through his Web site, TVBarn.com.
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AP-NY-02-09-06 1109EST
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