The evening news is a concept whose time has come and gone.
Every once in a while, a book so possesses me that I happily give up a couple of consecutive nights of sleep - as well as the evening news broadcasts and latenight talk shows - to finish it. That's what happened when I opened the novel 'Shadow Tag' by Louise Erdrich.
We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They've heard it on the radio. They've seen it on the Internet. They've seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.
Every evening, I would excuse myself from playing in the backyard and go inside to watch the evening news... I wanted to get out there and see the world, and as a kid, I knew that Peter Jennings had a thirst and hunger to travel the world, too.
Peter Jennings was the James Bond of evening news, and I always wanted to be that. His evening news was really a conversation with America, and I hope that's something I can achieve.
The evening news is evolving rapidly, and I think we have to be extraordinarily nimble.
On the day I started college in 1979, no woman had ever been on the United States Supreme Court or served as the Speaker of the House. None had been an astronaut or the solo anchor of a network evening news broadcast. Not one had been president of an Ivy League college or run a serious campaign for president.
Imagine what it would be like if you didn't know that the evening news was funded primarily by 'Big Pharma.' You would actually believe the stuff that they're saying. You might even think those are the stories that matter.
There are many reasons to worry; the evening news is full of them.
If you watch the evening news, Dr. Kissinger is very often brought on to sort of be the statesman of his age and to reflect dispassionately on world events. And so a film challenging his legacy, a film that assesses charges that are quite grave against him, is something that is touchy for the media to show.
