Brokaw visits UI, talks politics, journalism
Bryce Bauer - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 5/5/08 Section: Metro
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Tom Brokaw, who anchored "NBC Nightly News" for 21 years, spoke about the future of journalism this past weekend with prominent officials and donors at the UI, which he attended briefly in the late 1950s.
"I had a wonderful time here, probably the most important part of my life I learned here," he said. "I was a whiz kid coming out of high school, and I came here and went seriously off the rails: I learned it was a lot easier to fail than it is to succeed."
Brokaw, originally from South Dakota, attended the UI during the 1958-59 school year, but after having a self-described less-than-distinguished academic experience, returned to the Mount Rushmore State. Despite that, he still went on to a prominent career in broadcast journalism and to write for influential newspapers and a number of well-known books, including The Greatest Generation.
Over the years, he has seen journalism undergo a number of changes, most recently with the advent of the Internet and the appearance of a younger generation less likely to consume traditional media.
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"Journalists have to figure out where they can best serve the public," he said in an interview with The Daily Iowan. "There will always be a need for journalism. That is the most important thing … it is, after all, the oxygen of a democracy."
In addition to his anchoring gig, Brokaw has also done a large amount of political reporting. He faulted the institution in its rush to judgment in the current political race after New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton lost the Iowa Democratic caucuses to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
"I love Iowa. I love coming out here every fours years, but the idea that Hillary Clinton's campaign may have come to an end in Iowa was outrageous, frankly - [the Democrarts] had an entire calendar still in front of them," he said.
He also advocated for changes in how elections are carried out to engage more voters.
"Part of the problem, in my judgment, is that we make it too hard to vote. We vote still on the first Tuesday of November. It's a working day," he said, predicting that turnout would still increase in this year's November election.
Brokaw, who has had a standing invitation to the UI for some time, was brought here by the UI Foundation, said the foundation Senior Vice President Susan Shullaw. She noted that he is a prominent donor to the university.
During his time here, he met with many UI donors, spoke to the Broadcast Journalism Reporting and Writing class, and recorded promotional blurbs for Ponseti International, an organization dedicated to the worldwide treatment of clubfoot named after UI doctor Ignacio Ponseti.
DI Metro Editor Danny Valentine contributed to this report.
E-mail DI reporter Bryce Bauer at:
bryce-bauer@uiowa.edu
Q&A Tom Brokaw
DI: A lot of the younger generation are getting a lot of their news from "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." Is that eroding into the nightly news?
Tom Brokaw: Jon Stewart and I have talked about this a lot, and it troubles him a lot because he is a very serious consumer of news. I keep reassuring him, because I don't think he really needs to be reassured, that what he is doing is important because what he is doing is bringing people to the subject matter, and they can't watch Jon for half-an-hour, and they can't watch Steven for half-an-hour, without having some interest what else is going on in the world.
DI: What major issues do you see in the next 10 years, 20 years, and also facing the younger generation as well.
Tom Brokaw: The obvious ones are energy and climate, but energy is right at the top of all that and the reconfiguration of national security. What we've learned is that Islamic rage will not go away, what we've learned painfully in the last five years is that military solution alone is inadequate, we are going to have to develop a new paradigm for dealing with all that. Health care is a critical issue in this country to most families. And then the subject that has not gotten enough attention, in my judgment, is what I would describe as economic fairness or economic justice: This gap between the very wealth and the people down at the bottom or the middle.
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 3
Geezus
posted 5/05/08 @ 2:36 PM CST
Seriously. Who asked/wrote these questions. Dumbest people on earth
Mike
posted 5/05/08 @ 7:13 PM CST
I'm more disappointed that Tom freaking Brokaw comes to town and all the DI can manage is a 10 or so inch article. Come on. That is a tremendous disservice to your readership. (Continued…)
Sam M.
posted 5/05/08 @ 10:12 PM CST
Geezus, I think the questions are well-founded and important to the DI's readership, so maybe next time you fling juvenile insults around, back them up. (Continued…)
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