Check it Out!: Great Reporters on What It Takes to Tell the Story

Epilogue

Epilogue Art Athens died finishing this book. He labored three years on it. He was trying to beat what he could not have known would be his final deadline . Art’s magnetic personality brought him a universe of friends, colleagues , and listeners. He could tell a stem-winder of a story with a fabric and texture so fascinating you wanted to drop what you were doing to listen—and you often did. You were hooked, trapped, transfixed. His intellect would find “a puzzle wrapped in a mystery surrounded by an enigma” explainable—just another entertaining challenge to put into words. He made the complex simple, and he could tell a complicated tale flawlessly, with the precision of a university professor and the timing of a comic master. Athens’s facile mind could grasp the basics of any story. His two typing fingers would then reach to the keyboard and “pound home” a connection to the human mind and heart. He could relate an otherwise dry and unappealing city budget story to your house, to your street, and to you. As Art says so powerfully in this book, journalism seemed to have chosen him. Among his New York reporter colleagues he was a force of nature, the “perfect storm” of radio reporting. His hallmark was the consistent excellence of his work. Listeners loved him. Colleagues were in awe of him. On the day he left CBS I took a look inside his office: Twenty-one hooks on the wall held major awards. Art saw himself as a reporter in the trenches, a correspondent—but also as a mentor, and as a “keeper of the flame” of journalism. He would rant and rave about poor reporting, murderous English usage, incorrect grammar, clumsy syntax, and content errors. He loved news, made clear what it meant to him, and embraced its practitioners and their audience. His heroes were the great names in the news business. He stuck relentlessly to the standards they had established. This book shows how deeply rooted was his conviction that broadcast journalism has a pivotal role to play in our democracy, and that we in journalism should strive for the sometimes elusive but always worthy holy grails of balance and truth. He wanted journalism’s banner carried proudly and had no patience for anyone who would sully it. But this tough, streetwise, competitive, laser-focused reporter had a 170 g check it out! very funny, zany side. His bottomless well of humor included thousands of jokes, each of which he told with exacting technique, hilarious accents, and matchless style. He refused to accept anyone’s bad mood, pummeling any grumbler with jokes and one-liners until the lemon-pussed reporter or anchor had to laugh. He was a serious reporter who never took himself too seriously. Art’s office at the otherwise staid CBS headquarters building displayed his personality. The emblem of his space was a sign: It said, simply , “A neat desk is a sign of a sick mind.” Featured prominently on one wall was a poster depicting a “rear view” of a man wearing only a raincoat, held wide open in front of a marble statue. The caption read, “Expose yourself to Art.” Also in his office was a Rudy Giuliani–autographed yellow rubber duck accompanied by two yellow rubber chickens hanging from an upturned, brown, magnetized imitation deer foot. Another sign hung on the front of Art’s desk. It came from a polling place somewhere in upstate New York and read, “Sign in here. If you are blind or disabled or unable to read or write, you may receive assistance in the voting booth.” Without a doubt, this book is Art’s crowning achievement. In it he has taken us into the minds of some of the greats of broadcast journalism. His access to those on the Mount Rushmore of the news business, made possible by his charming, affable style and dauntless persistence, unlocks doors rarely if ever-before opened. As usual, Art has produced something that has taken all of us “to the next level”: from the venerable Walter Cronkite’s decision to get into the business based on a cartoon and a high school journalism class, to a riveting discussion of real-world news ethics by Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Andy Rooney, Linda Ellerbee, and Tom Brokaw. Should newspeople do commercials? What’s the story process at 60 Minutes? Why not quit or be fired once in a while? In this book, Art has...