Posted on 10/24/2006 8:55:15 AM PDT by abb
Conference preview: Q-and-A with Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Is the evening news more important than ever now? Oct.24, 2006
Copyright © 2006 PRSA. All rights reserved.
The following interview appears in the fall issue of The Strategist.
By John Elsasser
One could be forgiven for thinking Andrew Heyward’s career was as carefully planned as, well, one of the evening news broadcasts he had overseen during parts of his nearly 30-year career. Heyward, former president of CBS News, however, never planned on a career in the news business. Rather, his journey into journalism evolved from a temporary post he took during a year off before going to law school. “There was a lot of pressure to do something that was good for society,” Heyward recalled, not surprising given his father’s long tenure at UNICEF. He grew addicted to the excitement of network news during that first job producing a local newscast at the ripe old age of 23, and his plans for a career in law were forever altered. Today, Heyward is a senior adviser to Marketspace LLC, a subsidiary of Monitor Group, which specializes in helping companies make effective and profitable use of digital technology to interact with their customers. Heyward, who will share his perspective on news in a digital world as General Session speaker at the PRSA 2006 International Conference in Salt Lake City on Nov. 13, spoke in late August about his career at CBS and the importance of the evening news, and shared lessons learned from the infamous “60 Minutes Wednesday” story about President Bush’s National Guard Service from 2004.
What was your first job in broadcast journalism?
Andrew Heyward: It was such a low-level job, I literally replaced a kid who was leaving for college. It was kind of a desk assistant/production assistant at WNEW-TV, Channel 5, an independent station in New York City.
You were a history and literature major at Harvard. How did you get into broadcast news?
Heyward: I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for a living. I was in college during a highly political time — 1968 to 1972 — and, unlike today, at least where I came from, the business world was not as popular for undergraduates. People tended to go to law school if they didn’t know what they wanted to do for a living. I actually took the law boards and intended to go to law school, or at least apply to law school, after taking a year off to catch my breath. There was a lot of pressure to do something that was good for society. I’d always been interested in writing and in popular culture, so I thought that television news was a way to fuse those interests in a socially responsible manner. It was really meant to be just a year, but I started at this feisty local station and it got addictive. I stuck around and, within 18 months, was producing the hour-long newscast, which was what Channel 5 did in those days. So I was producing an hour-long newscast in the No. 1 market at the ridiculously young age of 23, which is not a testament to my great qualifications at all. It’s a testament to how unusual the station was, and the fact that the news director wanted somebody smart but malleable to produce the newscast so that he could put his imprint on it. Regardless, it was great for me because I got incredible experience at a young age.
Your father, E.J.R. Heyward, had a long and distinguished career with UNICEF, rising to the post of senior deputy executive director, which he held from 1949 until his retirement in 1981. What kind of impact did he have on your career?
Heyward: I certainly admired what he accomplished for UNICEF. I was able to travel with him on several of his missions to Asia. It was a powerful experience, and I suppose my desire to do something positive for society comes from him. However, at the same time, without being too psychobabblish about it, going into television was probably a form of rebellion. Both of my parents are foreign. They were international civil servants who came here in the 1940s to work for the United Nations. My mother was an interpreter. They were also very intellectual. Going into television, which is not something they would’ve approved of or did approve of, was a way of being super-American. Going into something as quintessentially American as television news was a way — not to thumb my nose at them — to certainly break away.
What was your father’s reaction to those rough-and-tumble WNEW news broadcasts?
Heyward: There was no way my parents ever watched a single one of those, nor did they watch the programs I produced at CBS News. They operated in — you could either say on a different plane or you could add a T and say on a different planet.
Were you OK with that? Were you happy with what you were doing?
Heyward: Oh, yes. It ended up being an absolutely fascinating trajectory. I never had a career plan. I just received one interesting assignment after another, and eventually, I moved to WCBS because it was a bigger arena. I took a step back in prestige because I wasn’t the show producer initially, but again, I worked my way up there. It’s a business that affords a lot of opportunity to somebody young and hungry for new experiences.
You worked at CBS for nearly 30 years. It has now been nearly a year since you left. Do you miss it?
Heyward: I have mixed feelings. There were certainly challenging times, but overall it was a great experience for me. I wouldn’t trade that experience, but I was also ready for a change. One of the things about being an operative executive at a high level — especially today with all of the pressure in the media environment — is that it’s sometimes difficult to pull back and be more thoughtful about the future. At a time when you have to be strategic as well as tactical, that can be problematic. It’s difficult to look at the map when both hands are gripping the wheel. Running a major division like CBS News — or the equivalent in a big media company — is very challenging, which makes it fascinating, certainly not boring. By the time I left, though, I welcomed a change of pace. So the short answer is, I don’t miss the hustle and bustle of the newsroom. I certainly miss having a large and collegial group of colleagues and friends around. However, I think that could be re-created somewhere else. Meanwhile, the chance to step back and grapple with the seismic changes in media, which have always been interesting to me, is a luxury that I couldn’t afford when I was in that job.
Is the faulty “60 Minutes Wednesday” report from September 2004 on President Bush’s National Guard record one of the challenges that you mentioned? Did the fallout from the report hasten your departure from CBS?
Heyward: Not directly. I spent the last year there in 2005 trying to rebuild morale and knit together the organization after the traumatic events that incident engendered. I was also at the end of my contract. I had turned 55, and I’d always planned to at least strongly consider doing something completely different. There’s no question that that was a terrible experience, and it made the last 14 or 15 months much more difficult than any other 14 or 15 months I can think of. Looking back, I lay that against having had the privilege to lead the organization through our coverage of Sept. 11, 2001, or Hurricane Katrina, having started “48 Hours” as a weekly program, having been executive producer of “The Evening News,” and having helped get “60 Minutes Wednesday” on the air. The positive so outweighs the negative that I left with a sense of having accomplished a lot.
In the frenzy that erupted, you, along with many of your colleagues at CBS, found yourself in the media’s crosshairs. How did you deal with being part of this media onslaught? What can PR professionals learn from your experiences?
Heyward: First of all, I think we handled the aftermath poorly and exacerbated the problem. There are lots of lessons there for PR professionals. In retrospect, they seem so obvious: Be quick to recognize not only that there is a problem but also the magnitude of the problem; be quick to address it, not only with the outside world but also with your own colleagues; and be open-minded about what your critics are saying. At the beginning, it might have been a commendable instinct to stand by your colleagues, [but] loyalty . . . should have been balanced more effectively and quickly with the responsibility to get to the bottom of the criticism and find out what had really happened and whether we had, in fact, fallen short in our reporting — which we had. That took way too long, and that was partly because we were too busy fending off attacks and had placed too much faith in colleagues based on their track records as opposed to the evidence that was before us. If we had found out what happened and disavowed the parts of the report that we eventually disavowed — if we had done that faster, and if we had said right away, “Look, we believe in the story or we wouldn’t have put it on. We believe in our vetting procedures or we wouldn’t have put it on, but these are important questions that are being raised and we’re going to immediately get to the bottom of them and find out what happened.” If we had done that instead of circling the wagons, this would’ve been less of a controversy and less of a tragedy than it ultimately turned out to be. So, those are certainly mistakes I’ll never make again.
New York Yankees manager Joe Torre has said that he never reads the sports pages. Were you reading what the media pundits were writing about you and the CBS organization, or were you just too busy with the business at hand?
Heyward: I tried to keep my consumption of stories about me to a minimum because a lot of it is vituperative — some of it is politically motivated. I think that criticisms of the institution, the broadcast and the programming are important, and to the degree that criticisms of me reflect mistakes that could affect the institution, then it is important to know about them. So, I didn’t hide in a rabbit hole. But I do think that Torre is onto something for two reasons: One, at a certain point, if you try to live your life to please everybody, especially if you’re in journalism or sports, you’re not going to be an effective leader. And, two, there’s no rule that says that you have to necessarily submit to all the pain that the rest of the world wants to inflict on you. I know there were people at the time who had things to say that were unflattering. The key is to strike a balance. I tend to see the world in nuanced, balanced, dialectical terms. You want to strike a balance between being aware of what people are saying and being open to criticism, to get from it what’s valid and what might prompt you to change. [You need to] balance that with perspective and confidence in the abilities, judgments and particularly the ethics that brought you to where you are.
Do you think CBS has moved on from all this?
Heyward: I do. It has been old news probably longer than some of the people who write about it think. There’s a tremendous amount of excitement, and rightly so, about Katie Couric coming in. Bob Schieffer was a tremendously positive influence. He did a terrific job not only on the “CBS Evening News” but also by increasing the audience. He was a calming, healing influence in the organization. They have new leadership. So it would be hard to wallow in the past given everything that has gone on there.
As we speak, Katie Couric is preparing for her first CBS newscast on Sept. 5. What are your thoughts on her anchoring the “CBS Evening News”?
Heyward: I think highly of her. I was involved in the initial discussion, so I’d be hypocritical if I said I didn’t because I certainly was in favor of trying to get her. The questions that some critics raise about her ability to handle the evening news or breaking news or serious stories are hogwash. She has proven again and again that she’s smart, savvy, a terrific interviewer. She certainly understands the news. The real challenge is that the genre no longer plays the vital role in American life that it did nearly 40 years ago, when Walter Cronkite came back from Vietnam after the Tet Offensive in 1968. For one of the few times in his life , he editorialized and said this was not a conflict that the United States could win. President Johnson turned to his press aide and said, “If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Not through anybody’s fault, but no evening news anchor could have that kind of influence today. While they’re still influential, it’s just a different world. People are busier; a lot of families have two breadwinners, and they’re either not home at 6:30 or they’re too busy with the rest of their lives. They also have so many other sources of news. If you’re a news junkie, you don’t have to wait until 6:30 to see the national or international news.
You have said that we’re living in a world of multiple ideas. How do you present a world of multiple ideas in 30 minutes each evening?
Heyward: Well, you can argue that [the evening network news] is more valuable because there’s so much information now that the role of the editor becomes even more important — you need somebody to help you sort through it all. When you look at the front page of your favorite newspaper, there is value in seeing what professional editors feel is the most important news and the hierarchy of stories. There’s also the value that a news organization can bring in finding stories that you don’t know anything about, and exposing you to interesting things that are going on that you never would’ve found any other way. The network evening news broadcasts still attract between a combined 25 million and 30 million people a night. That’s a tremendous number. Having professional journalists is arguably even more valuable given the increase in amateurs out there. The more overwhelming the flow of information, the more valuable the professionals are at playing a role. But the professionals aren’t going to dominate the way they did when they had an oligopoly. The second thing I would say is that the evening news broadcasts are going to continue to evolve. That’s one of the things I hope to talk about when I’m in Salt Lake City. Like the rest of society, we’re evolving toward a more peer-to-peer relationship between media providers and media consumers. Media consumers, of course, can become media providers now. You’re going to have less of an anchor handing down wisdom from Olympus and more of a relationship based on authenticity. While you went to the office or school, [the media] sent somebody to the story and here’s what he or she found out, as opposed to, “We know better because we are a network news organization.”
We talked about history and Walter Cronkite. Do you think that the young news consumers today care about broadcast history, in the sense that they feel they should be watching CBS because of its great legacy?
Heyward: No, not at all. Young people get their news from too many other places, including by accident and osmosis. News is not as big a priority in their lives as it was for us. The times and the culture have changed.
At the PRSA 2006 International Conference, you’ll be talking about news in a digital world, how it’s changing and why we should care. What can we expect from your General Session speech?
Heyward: I’m going to use news more as an example of how digital media are changing society. It’s not going to be just about journalism. What I hope to do is start with journalism because that’s my direct experience, but then talk about the trend toward consumer empowerment in all fields and what the implications are for the PR profession. Sophisticated, knowledgeable consumers with real information at their disposal are a good thing for ethical companies and for PR people whose job it is to represent those companies.
John Elsasser is the editor in chief of The Strategist. He joined PRSA in 1994. E-mail: john.elsasser@prsa.org.
Andrew Heyward is a General Session speaker during the 2006 PRSA International Conference in Salt Lake City. Catch his talk, “News in a Digital World: How It’s Changing and Why You Should Care,” at 9 a.m. on Nov. 13. For all the details, please visit http://www.prsa.org/conf2006.
Andrew Heyward at a glance: Andrew Heyward is a senior adviser to Marketspace LLC, a subsidiary of Monitor Group that specializes in helping companies make effective and profitable use of digital technology to interact with their customers. Heyward was President, CBS News, from January 1996 to November 2005. That tenure of nearly 10 years is the second longest of any president in the nearly 50-year history of CBS News. During that time, CBS News programming grew significantly in audience, regularly scheduled hours and profitability. Under Heyward’s leadership, CBS News’s tradition of journalistic quality and integrity was recognized with an extraordinary number of broadcast journalism’s most prestigious awards: 57 News and Documentary Emmys, 13 Peabody, 13 Alfred I. DuPont/Columbia University, six Overseas Press Club and 46 RTNDA/Edward R. Murrow Awards. The list of Murrows includes seven for Overall Excellence: four for television — including 2003, 2004 and 2005 — and three on the radio side. Heyward also spearheaded CBS News’s move into new media. Its award-winning Web site, http://www.CBSNews.com, became increasingly competitive and was a leader in providing free, advertiser-supported broadband video. In 2005, CBSNews.com underwent a major expansion in conjunction with the newly created CBS Digital Media group. Heyward also was a key force in the establishment of the leading financial news Web site, CBS MarketWatch, and served on its board of directors from its founding in 1997 to its acquisition by Dow Jones in January 2005. Heyward is also an award-winning producer and executive producer. He has won 12 national Emmy Awards. Before his tenure as president, Heyward was executive producer, “CBS Evening News,” and vice president, CBS News (October 1994-January 1996). Heyward was also responsible for developing and launching “48 Hours,” the primetime CBS News hour that premiered in January 1988.
Want to read more articles like this? Then consider a subscription to PR Tactics and The Strategist, PRSA’s award-winning publications. Start advancing your career now: https://www.prsa.org/_Resources/orderform/index.cfm?ident=of2
Note: PRSA membership includes complimentary subscriptions to Tactics and The Strategist.
Ping
Second generation moonbat.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.