Don't Touch That Dial!
One TV news show doesn't cover car wrecks and 7-11 holdups, and, what's more, it's run by a woman.
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The Sterrett affair was a watershed in the history of Newsroom. There is no doubt that it helped establish the program as a gutsy news outfit that needed to be taken seriously. But dropping the complaint also shattered the illusions of more people than just Mike Ritchey. Many of the reporters on the show at that time were determinedly idealistic in both their personal and professional beliefs. For them the promise of public broadcasting was that it was a place where, finally, the truth could be told without a station manager being worried about losing an advertiser or provoking negative viewer reactions. No stories would be killed, reporters would be encouraged to work on the controversial and the touchy, and would be expected to rock the boat. They rode the crest of the wave during the Sterrett affair until that night when they were told, in effect, rock the boat but don't swamp it. That realization amounted to a loss of innocence for some of the reporters and that loss is part of the reason Newsroom's personnel has changed almost completely since the end of the Sterrett affair.
Lehrer's tenure as Newsroom's editor and producer lasted until May, 1972. During that time, however rocky the road may have been, he had built the show from a half-hour, largely ignored, often technically flawed oddity to an hour-long production which had won awards for its reporting and filmmaking, was watched in over 25,000 households each week, and had achieved a technical smoothness that nonetheless avoided the obvious slickness of commercial stations. When he resigned from Newsroom to become Coordinator of Public Affairs for the Public Broadcasting Service, he named as his successor Darwin Payne, the man who had conceived the idea of filing the complaint against the county commissioners.
Payne's tenure was short and unfortunate. Perhaps sensing some of his ensuing difficulties, he had not at first wanted to take the job. He is, by his own admission, "not a TV personality type," but a softer spoken, more reflective kind of man whose strength lies in the depths of still pools rather than in the force of white water. When Lehrer offered him the job, Payne was appearing only occasionally on the show. He had taken a teaching job at SMU and was looking forward to finishing his dissertation during the summer. But Lehrer persisted, arrangements were made at SMU, and Payne was promised a six-week leave so that he could finish work on his book. He assumed the job on May 12, 1972 with the cards stacked against him.
Taking over in the shadow of Jim Lehrer, Darwin Payne was under tremendous pressure to live up to Lehrer's achievement with Newsroom. That pressure was not lessened by the fact that he was short-handed. Several reporters had left the show or would leave soon, Bill Porterfield and Mike Ritchey, two mainstays, among them. Payne's replacements were disappointing. He was determined that reporting skill should take precedence over skill in appearing on television. That had always been the order of priorities during Lehrer's tenure, too; but Payne's new reporters seemed particularly inept on the air.
Newsroom's ratings fell and continued to fall. The show itself sagged, too, its spirit deflated; there were personality clashes between a new reporter and several of the old ones and those feelings were not always concealed even on the air. The smooth-running, spirited competence Lehrer had worked so hard to develop seemed to be hanging by increasingly slender threads. When the station management began grumbling, Payne defended his staff, thinking that it was not the management's prerogative to tell him who was a good reporter and who was not.
Later Payne said, "I wanted to get as large an audience as I possibly could within my framework." But the question was just how narrow would that framework would become. The management decided not to wait much longer to find out.
Near the end of the summer, as the situation was growing more difficult, Payne took two weeks of the six-week leave he had been promised. During that time he was contacted by Robert Wilson, the station manager, who wanted some changes made in the program, among them taking one reporter off the air. Payne, still unwilling to take that step, wanted to discuss the subject when he returned. A few days later, while he was still on leave, he received a letter saying that he had been fired. It was announced to the press that he had resigned to work on his dissertation. Payne, whatever his shortcomings as Newsroom's producer may or may not have been, deserved better treatment.
Lee Clark had been substituting for Payne as moderator during his leave. When he was fired she inherited the mantle, being officially named editor and executive producer on September 1, 1972. She was the first woman to be named head of a major American news program. If Darwin Payne's sudden firing or Lee's sex created any doubts about the future of the program, they have long been dispelled. Both Bill Porterfield and John Merwin, a young reporter hired by Lee and formerly with The Dallas Morning News, claim, "This is the best news outfit I've ever worked for." Merwin added, after a moment of wistful speculation, "It's probably the best place I ever will work. I just can't imagine another place as free as this one doing the kind of work we do."
That freedom is partly due to the fact that Lee Clark, in spite of her title as editor, is not an editor in the usual sense of the word. She does not, for instance, check her reporters' final copy. There is a staff meeting every afternoon at four when the reporters describe the stories they have for that evening's show. The other staff members add comments and ask questions much the way they will do on the air; Lee decides the order in which to run the stories and how long to give to each one; but the copy read during the meeting may or may not be the copy read on the air. Bob Ray Sanders, whose beat is Fort Worth, says that he doesn't even write his stories until after the meeting is over. "Discussing it around the table, trying to tell the others what the story is about, gives me a chance to organize my thoughts. But nobody knows exactly what I'm going to say until they hear me read it on the air."
An equally important aspect of the freedom Newsroom allows its reporters is that they are encouraged, in fact expected, to seek out stories beyond the range of their regular assignments. And they are given great latitude in choice of subjects. As a result Newsroom has run filmed documentaries on the life of homosexuals in Dallas, on a day in the life of an ambulance driver in Fort Worth, and on the life inside a prison which holds both male and female prisoners.
Newsroom's different approach to the news is quite apparent even in its most ordinary broadcasts. The program which began with the story about the Fort Worth Housing Authority's problems, referred to earlier, continued with a long filmed documentary about the problems of unwed mothers in these blissful post-sexual-revolution days. Then followed a live interview with Sarah Weddington, a legislator from Travis County, who argued the suit which caused the Supreme Court to rule the Texas abortion statutes unconstitutional. She was given enough time to explain the grounds of the suit, why she thought it was necessary, and what she thought the effects of the decision, which at that time was still pending, would be for both Texas and the rest of the country.
Following her, somewhat anti-climactically, John Merwin reported that the Dallas Community Action Committee had cancelled its meeting for that evening. Merwin, however, had done some digging into the matter and had discovered that the DCAC contained two opposing factions. The meeting that night had been called to elect a new chairman, but the present chairman, according to Merwin, had determined that his sympathizers would be outnumbered in the meeting and would therefore lose control of the chairmanship. Hardly the highlight of the show, the story nonetheless indicated the kind of resoluteness and imagination which flourishes in the Newsroom staff.
A second guest was then introduced. He was an A.L. Miner, a hog farmer in the city of Fort Worth who has been fighting the city for the right to continue raising hogs within the corporate limits. The rest of the show, about 15 minutes, was given to reading comments and answering questions phoned in by viewers.
Newsroom is now entering its third year. How much longer it can survive is problematical. It is currently financed by the Ford Foundation grant, by supplementary grants from the Wyly Foundation and the Fikes Foundation, and by donations from private citizens. The Ford grant, under the terms of the original agreement, is being reduced year by year and unless more foundation support comes along, the show will be increasingly dependent on the general public to stay on the air. Although the audience is increasing, Newsroom still has to contend with a certain boredom on the part of the public with local news and also the suspicion in certain quarters that they are a bunch of weirdos up to no good. When I asked the lady behind the desk of my motel if she ever watched Newsroom she checked up and down the lobby for interlopers before leaning closer to answer. "I try to watch it," she said, "but if my husband catches me, he makes me turn it off."
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