From Our Broadcast Headquarters in New York, Goodnight

There is no one, absolutely essential truth for all people. Every time I look at a coin, I instinctively want to look at the other side. -- Peter Jennings

It’s rare that someone’s own quote so aptly describes their life’s work, but if there was ever a journalist so enthused and fascinated by the human condition and its political fall out, it was Peter Jennings.

I mainly associate Mr. Jennings (I simply can’t call him Peter) with my youth. The ABC nightly news, particularly during the late eighties and early nineties was to me the pinnacle of American news casting at its best: incisive, informative and unafraid to ask difficult questions. In short, it was the antithesis of the American media landscape today, one that is cloying, sensationalistic and downright scared of the current Administration.

I remember vividly my stay in New York City in 1993. I was attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and I was truly alone for the first time in my life. I was another person in NYC’s endless line of dreamers, rebuilding my life from the most basic levels. Locate nearest grocery stores? Check. Find a doctor? Check. Get a phone? Check. Get a bank account? Check. Find out where Madonna lives? Check.

I arrived in late January, the very dead of winter, in a city almost dazzling in its capacity for loneliness. Sparkling skyscrapers were monoliths of anonymity; Central Park a gross white tundra ironically surrounded by the warmly lit abodes of the comfortable and wealthy.

I’ve never been as poor or as afraid as I was in New York City.

The one thing I held on to during those cold first months was World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Along with my clothes, books – and yes I admit it – my stuffed toys, it was the one bit of home that I was able to take with me. I was able to imagine my parents and sister sitting down to the same broadcast as me, hearing Mr. Jennings deliver the news with his usual eloquence, always getting a Canadian angle in where relevant.

And what a delivery. Honestly, Jennings could have made the phone book interesting to listen to. His style was so in contrast to the stiff jaw, talking through cotton batten manner of Brokaw and the maudlin pandering of Rather. It was a part of a personal style that was so essentially his, a style bespeaking capability and competence, that made World News Tonight an experience above that of a mere news cast.

So what happened? Well like most other shows, WNT lost its way, subscribing to the “rock ‘n’ roll” format approach that panders to the lowest common denominator. “News as entertainment” was something even Jennings couldn’t conquer for me, and like a lot of other people, I just stopped watching.

But I never stopped caring about Peter Jennings. As I hear his colleagues talk today about what a loss his death is to them, I have no trouble believing it. He was a bastion of class in an increasingly classless profession. Imagine working in today's journalistic arena with someone who cared about the point, the bigger picture, the story. How refreshing that must of been. How sad he’s gone.