Goodnight, David: Brinkley dies at 82

[AKA]

News Anchor David Brinkley Dies at 82

By Frazier Moore
The Associated Press

NEW YORK (June 12) - David Brinkley, who first gained fame as one-half of NBC's Huntley-Brinkley anchor team and for more than a half-century loomed large in the newscasting world he helped chart, has died at the age of 82.

Brinkley died Wednesday night at his home in Houston of complications from a fall, ABC News said Thursday.

During his career, which in recent years took him to ABC, Brinkley won 10 Emmy awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards and, in 1992, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Former President Bush called him "the elder statesman of broadcast journalism," but Brinkley spoke of himself in less grandiose terms.

"Most of my life," he said in a 1992 interview, "I've simply been a reporter covering things, and writing and talking about it."

He stepped down as host of ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley" in November 1996 but continued to do commentaries. He left amid a rare controversy, and an apology: Late on Election Night, after a long evening, he had said unkind things about President Clinton on the air, including calling him a "bore."

Clinton sat for an interview for Brinkley's last show anyway, and after Brinkley apologized, told him: "I always believe you have to judge people on their whole work, and if you get judged based on your whole work, you come out way ahead."

Based in Washington and focusing on politics, Brinkley was known for his gentlemanly manner, wry wit and, as the Clinton incident illustrated, occasional suffer-no-fools bluntness. Playing against such refinement were a boyish appearance and a jerky style of delivery that suggested a mild case of hiccups.

"If I was to start today I probably couldn't get a job," Brinkley once said, "because I don't look like what people think an anchorperson should look like."

Perhaps not. But in 1956, his distinctive presence was paired with craggy, leading-man-handsome Chet Huntley for NBC News' coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions. It was a perfect fit.

Following that success, the two took over NBC's nightly newscast, with Huntley in New York and Brinkley in Washington. The program, at first only 15 minutes long, switched back and forth between them.

Beyond that regular report, Huntley and Brinkley led NBC as it interrupted regular programming to cover space shots, assassinations, riots and other breaking news with a thoroughness summed up by the unofficial byword "CBS plus 30 (minutes)."

With Chet and David at the helm, NBC News enjoyed ratings dominance throughout the 1960s. During the 1964 Democratic convention, NBC, up against CBS and its anchor Walter Cronkite, won an astonishing 84 percent of the viewership.

But their fame extended far beyond the realm of journalism. A consumer-research company found in 1965 that these co-anchors were recognized by more adult Americans than were John Wayne or the Beatles. Despite their mutual disdain for it, their "Huntley-Brinkley Report" signoff - "Goodnight, Chet"; "Goodnight, David" - became part of pop culture.

Then in 1970, Huntley retired. He died four years later.

Brinkley co-anchored the renamed "NBC Nightly News" with John Chancellor, then became the program's commentator. But the spell was broken. "The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite" had taken the ratings lead, and NBC News had stumbled.

Entering his 60s, Brinkley in 1981 began the second act of his career by exiting the organization he had joined 38 years earlier.

He lent his heavyweight status to ABC News, a late bloomer then on the way up. There he flourished, particularly on "This Week with David Brinkley," a Sunday morning interview and discussion program.

Despite having been present for the creation of TV news, Brinkley insisted "I didn't create anything. I just got here early."

Born in Wilmington, N.C., on July 20, 1920, Brinkley was still in high school when he began writing for his hometown newspaper. He was educated at the University of North Carolina and Vanderbilt University, and after Army service he worked in Southern bureaus for the United Press syndicate.

He moved to Washington, D.C., thinking a radio job awaited him at CBS News. Instead, he had landed a job four blocks away at NBC News. He became White House correspondent - NBC's first.

Not long after that, as Brinkley recounted in his 1995 memoir, "a large, odd-looking object arrived at the Washington studio ..., so big it could barely be rolled through the door. It was our first television camera."

Brinkley was divorced from his first wife, Ann, in the 1960s and married Susan Benfer in 1972.

Among his four children, Alan is an American Book Award-winning historian and Joel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

The author of three books, Brinkley aptly summed up his career and life in the subtitle of his memoir: "11 Presidents, 4 Wars, 22 Political Conventions, 1 Moon Landing, 3 Assassinations, 2,000 Weeks of News and Other Stuff on Television, and 18 Years of Growing Up in North Carolina."

"If I were 20 years old, I would try to do the same thing again, all of it," he told a New York Times interviewer - his son Joel - in a February 1997 profile. "I have no regrets. None at all."

[-*Leah*-]

I heard about that. Its so sad.

[Cactus Jack]

That is very sad

[Montana Ponine]

That's so sad.

[~*Hannah_Lee*~]

That's so sad. He will be missed.

[Faith]

Rest in Peace, David

[TheHappyBurgerMeister]

how sad. Actually I never heard of him until about 2 years ago. My neighbors got a dog they named Brinkley and then they named there second dog Huntley. Just like the co-anchors. I born yet when they were in broadcasting.

[Tuesday Weld]

RIP

[AKA]

Reaction to David Brinkley's Death

The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Reaction to David Brinkley's death:

"I was a high school sophomore watching the first night (Huntley and Brinkley) came on the air, and it really changed my life. A small bulb went on in the back of my mind and I thought, `That's the kind of work I'd like to do.'" — Tom Brokaw, NBC News anchor.

___

"One of the loveliest men in this business, one of the most generous and greatest reporters." — Barbara Walters, ABC News.

___

"David was a good friend and a fierce competitor with his famously dry wit and deep wisdom. He once told me that he was weary of the wit appellation. `Can't they think of any other adjective for me?' he said." — Walter Cronkite, former anchor, CBS News.

___

"It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of David Brinkley. I had great respect for David. Both Barbara and I considered him a friend. We admired his fairness and the integrity that he brought to his profession. Journalism, electronic and print, now cries out for more David Brinkleys. We will miss him." — Former President Bush

___

"He set a shining example for everyone in broadcast journalism. ABC News has a richer heritage because of his many contributions to the network. I will miss his grace, elegance, wit and, above all, his tireless devotion to world-class journalism." — David Westin, ABC News president.

___

"His signature was crisp writing and a distinctive clipped delivery. At least two generations of broadcast journalists, especially those at NBC, honored him by trying to emulate his style ... David Brinkley was a fierce but fair competitor." — Dan Rather, CBS News anchor.

___

"He developed a style of delivering television news that you can still hear echoing across the business. That kind of clipped, witty, sardonic way of delivering the news became almost a generic definition of what a news guy sounds like. When people are doing a parody of what a news broadcaster sounds like, they're doing Brinkley and they don't even know it." — Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television.

___

"David Brinkley served NBC with style and aplomb for almost 40 years, and in the process had a tremendous influence on the profession of broadcast journalism. With his keen intelligence, dry wit, and crisp delivery, David Brinkley set the standard for those who followed in his path." — Bob Wright, NBC chairman.

___

"His career was remarkable for a lot of reasons. One is the sheer length of it. Television is an ephemeral medium and he had four decades in it." — Jeff Greenfield, CNN.

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"When he teamed up with Chet Huntley for the 1956 political conventions, America saw something brand new: reporting that brought personality and intimacy to the screen and at the same time was of impeccable accuracy and authority." Neal Shapiro, NBC News president.

___

"Until David came along, broadcast writing was nothing more than rewriting what was written for print. It was David who pioneered the idea that seems so obvious now: that you ought to write for broadcast the way you speak for broadcast ... He set the style of broadcast writing that is taught in every journalism school in the country."_ Joseph Angotti, chairman of the broadcast program at Northwestern University and a former Brinkley producer at NBC.

___

"One of the great dilemmas about working with Brinkley over many years was to sit beside him for long periods of time on Election Night or a political convention and be absolutely certain that before too long you were not trying to talk like him. It was very distinctive and unmistakable." — Peter Jennings, ABC News anchor.

___

"I always thought that ABC News made him a star but NBC made him a legend" — Jane Pauley, former "Dateline NBC" host.

[*Pleasant Tomorrow*]

How sad

[Janice]

The NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw did a wonderful piece on David Brinkley. It was very touching. He seemed like the nicest man.