Some interesting articles on the TV News Industry. The first one discusses the relentless changes the big 3 networks are experiencing in their evening newscast, and by extension their news divisions. For network newscasts, it seems the writing is on the wall -- be relevant to younger viewers, or be extinct in 3 years. You can read the Baltimore Sun article here:
The second article, from The New York Times, is a profile on CBS' hot property of the moment, a war correspondent who used to work as a hostess and a swimsuit model. I've re-printed the article here so you don't need to sign-up if you are not a New York Times subscriber.
War Zone 'It Girl' Has a Big Future at CBS News
By JACQUES STEINBERG
Since joining CBS News as a correspondent in 2002, Lara Logan has been periodically told that her relentless knack for gaining access to dangerous places is reminiscent of a young Dan Rather or Mike Wallace.
In 2003, for example, viewers of a segment she reported from Afghanistan for the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes" saw the horizon suddenly turn upside down as a military vehicle ferrying her and a cameraman was upended by a roadside mine.
A few weeks ago, in her first segment for the flagship edition of "60 Minutes," Ms. Logan was again inside an armored Humvee, this one brought to a halt on a dusty road outside Baghdad. Ordered by the vehicle's commander to stay inside, Ms. Logan could be seen defiantly following him out, as he peered over what turned out to be an unexploded bomb.
But if her reporting evokes the glory of her predecessors, such comparisons go only so far.
Ms. Logan is a 34-year-old South African who just 15 years ago was a hostess at the Water Club on the East River. Though her résumé includes tours as a producer at Reuters and a reporter at two big South African newspapers, she also had an after-school job, in both high school and college, as a swimsuit model.
Now, as the new president of CBS News, Sean McManus, weighs whether to remake the "CBS Evening News" with a single anchor or an ensemble, he has already made one early decision about the future of the broadcast: Ms. Logan, her title yet to be determined, will be one of its stars. When the new "Evening News" is unveiled, probably sometime next year, Ms. Logan will have a lead role reporting from abroad, Mr. McManus said in an interview last week.
In that capacity, she will be asked to apply her experience as a war correspondent and penchant for derring-do to one of the most intractable challenges in broadcasting: luring younger viewers to the news.
"Some people just jump off the screen and have star value," Mr. McManus said. "Lara Logan falls in that category."
In a separate interview, Mr. Wallace, 87, cited her bravery and resourcefulness, adding, "She brings a sensibility that, I think, is somewhat different from us old guys."
That is probably an understatement.
Throughout her journalism career - which began in high school when she was a part-time reporter at The Sunday Tribune in her native Durban - Ms. Logan has been dogged by suggestions that she has used her model looks to unfair advantage.
In November 2001, for example, Ms. Logan, then a correspondent for the British morning show "GMTV," managed to infiltrate the upper ranks of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, where she gained exclusive interviews at Bagram Air Base with General Babajan, a commander.
Writing in The Spectator, one of Ms. Logan's rivals, Julian Manyon of the television network ITN observed, "Some of our jealous competitors have unkindly suggested that the unique access we have hitherto enjoyed to Bagram has less to do with my journalistic talents than the considerable physical charms of my traveling companion, the delectable Lara Logan of GMTV."
He added that Ms. Logan "exploits her God-given advantages with a skill that Mata Hari might envy."
Over a recent lunch in Manhattan, during a break in her coverage of the Saddam Hussein trial, Ms. Logan said, "There isn't a journalist alive who won't admit to you they use every advantage they have."
In that respect, she said, she was no different from the generations of male reporters who had employed various means to ingratiate themselves with the military. "Some guys come from a military background, and they'll use that," she said. "Some guys are very sporty, and they'll play on the sporty thing."
"As a woman, I have lots of advantages you don't have," she told a male interviewer. "I can be vulnerable. Usually you don't have to do anything. Men do it to themselves. They feel like they want to protect you."
Ms. Logan, married for six years to Jason Siemon, until recently a professional basketball player in England, told how she had fairly begged a clerk at the Russian Embassy in London to give her an expedited visa days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"Let's just say I met the guy from the embassy, after it had closed, in a cafe," she said.
But Ms. Logan said that "other times, being attractive can really hurt you," and that she never could have reached the upper echelons of American broadcast journalism if she didn't have tenacity, fearlessness and compassion.
That she is nothing if not relentless was evident from an early age. Ms. Logan grew up as one of seven siblings in Durban. Her father was a businessman, her mother a sales representative.
Liz Clarke, a family friend who was an editor at The Sunday Tribune in Durban, said Ms. Logan had begun lobbying for a job at the paper at age 12. When Ms. Logan turned 17, Ms. Clarke finally relented.
"She did everything any seasoned journalist would have done and more," Ms. Clarke said.
After graduating from high school, Ms. Logan moved to Paris, where she took a job as an au pair, but not for long. "I would be on my hands and knees, cleaning up urine from a spoiled little French brat," she recalled. "I realized then that my place was not in the home and never was going to be."
After six months, she went on a vacation to New York and never returned. Less than a year later, in 1990, yearning for a university education and to cover the dismantling of apartheid, she returned to South Africa.
While studying commerce and English at the University of Natal, Ms. Logan also worked at The Daily News, a sister paper of The Sunday Tribune. After graduating in 1992, she began a 10-year odyssey that included five years at Reuters Television in Johannesburg.
Ms. Logan said her after-school work as a swimsuit model - which included department store advertisements - had remained largely unknown until 2001. By then, she was a star correspondent on British television. Her mother, however inadvertently, touched off a minor scandal when she gave an interviewer access to a drawer full of photos, and he found some rejected modeling proofs.
Before long, they had been sold to The Daily Record and The Mirror, which plastered them on their front pages.
Still, it was Ms. Logan's work as a war reporter - specifically as a freelance correspondent for CBS Radio during the fall of Kabul - that would earn her biggest break: a slot as a correspondent on the weeknight edition of "60 Minutes."
"It's basic shoe-leather reporting that she is good at," said Jeff Fager, then executive producer of that broadcast and now executive producer of the Sunday broadcast.
If there is an aspect of Ms. Logan's work that has long given her bosses pause, it is that she occasionally appears fearless to the point of recklessness.
"She takes her fearlessness to the point that it possibly puts her life in danger," Ms. Clarke said.
It is an assertion that Ms. Logan, when asked about her war reporting, does not necessarily dispute.
"I think you're not really thinking about being afraid," she said. "For me, I'm just so happy to be there, in that situation. It's so fascinating. You get a view into life that you wouldn't otherwise have. That's what you're thinking."
(Courtesy: The New York Times)
