More than a Newsreader

Peter Jennings at ABC studios in New York, Feb. 5, 2001. AP Photo/Gino Domenico.

Peter Jennings was made anchor of CTV's late night national news at age 23, in 1962, and astonished his Ottawa newsroom crew by writing his own copy, purposely inserting occasional mistakes, scrambling names, sometimes whole sentences. In dress rehearsals, he’d then correct the mistakes on the fly.

“It was a trick,” he explained decades later, laughing. “I wanted to learn how to read stories, not sentences; to always be alive to what I was telling people. I never thought of myself as a reader. I was and continue to be a working journalist who provides people with last-minute breaking news.”

Jennings, who died Sunday night at age 67 in New York, would hone and perfect that “last minute” skill. Since 1983 he had been anchor and senior editor for ABC World News Tonight, one of the Big Three, along with CBS’s Dan Rather and NBC’s Tom Brokaw, a triumvirate of field-trained newsmen who ruled American television nightly news prior to the advent of cable television and the internet. His death marks the end of an era when America tuned in every night to one of three omnipotent anchormen for news of the world.

Jennings had been in the field since age nine, when he had his own Ottawa radio show. His father was Charles Jennings, one of CBC radio’s first news anchormen and, early in his career, part of Foster Hewitt’s legendary Hockey Night in Canada broadcast team in the 1930s. One of Peter Jennings’s first TV jobs was hosting a teen music and dance show, Saturday Date, on CJOH, CTV’s Ottawa affiliate. “Great experience, learning to think on your feet, and I never had to dance,” he said of the show.

Telegenic, butter smooth, and scrupulously well informed (he had a five-newspaper-a-day habit during Saturday Date), Jennings made an easy transition to news and the CTV anchor desk. In 1964, he was covering the Democratic convention in Los Angeles for CTV when he was noticed by ABC’s news president. ABC was in third place in news ratings at the time and looking for a way to connect with young, urban viewers. The network made Jennings anchor on Feb. 1, 1965. He was 26 years old.

“That didn’t work,” Jennings allowed. “I was going up against [CBS veteran anchorman] Walter Cronkite. I needed more seasoning.” He was made ABC foreign correspondent in 1968, establishing a Beirut, Lebanon bureau. After winning a Peabody Award for a 1974 profile of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, Jennings returned to the United States, becoming host of what is now ABC’s Good Morning America in 1975. Eight years later, he returned to ABC’s evening anchor desk.

“I learned how to be a newsman in Beirut,” he said. “Be skeptical, find sources you can trust. People talk about trust in an anchor. Well, you have to trust in a story before you tell it properly. Research and preparation, confidence in what you’re saying is what makes a TV journalist. I learned that in the Middle East.”

Peter Jennings in 1965. Getty Images/Peter Kramer.

I learned a great deal about Peter Jennings’s sense of preparation when I interviewed him for his book, The Century, in 1998. I’d called a cab to get to our breakfast interview. There was no traffic on Toronto streets and I arrived a half-hour before the restaurant opened. Jennings was already standing outside the restaurant, reading his third newspaper of the day. “I’m always first to an interview,” he said. “Old foreign correspondent’s habit, always want to be there first and last.”

When the owner finally arrived, letting us in, Jennings asked, “You right- or left-handed?” Right, I replied. He then sat down on my left. “That’ll give you more room to write notes,” Jennings said. Even without makeup, Jennings looked at 6:30 in the morning as if he could step in front of a camera. He was affable, opinionated, and extraordinarily helpful, providing, without prompting, the correct spellings of all the Canadian journalists working in the United States.

“Canadian TV journalists have a reputation for being good at journalism as well as TV,” Jennings said. “American networks snap us up because we don’t need any handholding. We can go to work right away.”

Jennings maintained his Canadian citizenship until his death — though he became a dual citizen in 2003 — and spent many summers holidaying at the family cottage in Gatineau, Que. Until 10 years ago, he occasionally played pickup hockey in New York with other expats. “Perhaps I’ve always been a foreign correspondent in the United States,” he said. “That’s been helpful to me over the years. Canadians view America with a certain critical detachment. We see things about America that Americans don’t. I know that every night when I read the news I can feel my mother, a fierce Canadian nationalist, over my shoulder saying, ‘Now Peter, what are you saying here?’”

A 1993 survey of TV journalists by Broadcasting & Cable magazine suggested that two-thirds of American broadcasters thought that Jennings was the best TV news anchor in the business. Washington Review named him anchor of the year three consecutive years that decade.

Jennings felt that television news was better than ever in the modern era, but conceded that the proliferation of cable networks and the internet made it more difficult for networks to command the same kind of audience numbers. “That doesn’t concern me at all, except for the inevitable budget cuts. But it’s maybe a more exciting time now to be a journalist,” he continued. “Journalism moves faster today. You need the story in an hour instead of next day. Our big challenge is reaching the young viewer.”

Forty years after 26-year-old Peter Jennings was first hired as ABC’s lead anchorman, the average age of ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX network news viewers is 60. Younger viewers increasingly find their news on cable TV, with programs like Jon Stewart’s news satire, The Daily Show, or on the internet. ABC will inevitably find a successor to the legendary Canadian-born newsman, but the network will never be able to replace Peter Jennings.

Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.