ABC news anchor Peter Jennings, one of the last of a breed, has died at the age of 67. Rest In Peace.
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Ironically, falling audiences coincided with decisions at all three networks to strip their news gathering abilities. They closed most of their foreign bureaus, many in US cities, and cut back dramatically in Washington.
The trade-off often frustrated Jennings and his colleagues but also enriched them. He earned an estimated $10 million annually.
For context, that would translate into about 30 news producers. They are the people who do most of the gathering of the raw news product, which is then presented by correspondents and anchors.
It is also more than 15 times the salary of the executive editor of the New York Times.
Jennings was also erudite. He wrote two popular books in recent years with co-author Todd Brewster.
His earning power and erudition was a special achievement, given his background.
Not only was he born and brought up outside the country, he finished neither high school nor college.
In a US increasingly pre-occupied with “credentialing”, the old, hard-knocks school of journalism is a rarity.
His gave the credit to his father, Charles Jennings, a leading figure with the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.
In The Century, the first of his books, published in 1998, Jennings remembered his father telling him to describe the sky.
He was then instructed to go outside and describe each piece of sky, to sharpen his perceptions.
I was shocked and sad to hear this news. The Beeb has an interesting perspective: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4133546.stm