IN THE SPRING of 1980, 10 months after I started, Carl Bernstein became bureau chief of ABC News. He strutted around the place like the big deal he was, having broken Watergate with Bob Woodward seven years earlier. He’d replaced George Watson, who was leaving to run a brand-new cable news operation. Watson invited Wendy to come with him, promising he’d put her on the producer track.
Then he said, “You know the young people here; is there anyone we should take with us?”
Wendy said there was.
I nervously walked into Carl Bernstein’s office, nearly blinded by his royal-blue crushed-corduroy three-piece suit.
I told him that I had accepted an offer at a new cable news network—CNN. He looked confused.
“Why are you going to the minor leagues when you’ve already made it to the majors?” he said.
“I know, Mr. Bernstein—but I think I need to learn how to play baseball first.”
Yep. I actually said that.
4
Chicken Noodle News
I DIDN’T KNOW MUCH about Ted Turner. I knew he was a swashbuckling sailor who’d won the 1977 America’s Cup, held up bottles of champagne at his victory press conference, and appeared to be three sheets to the wind. And I knew he was a millionaire crazy enough to start a 24-hour cable news channel at a time when no one really knew what cable was.
The entire network had been built from scratch in less than a year. The Atlanta headquarters were in a plantation-style mansion on Techwood Drive known as “Tara on Techwood,” after Turner’s favorite movie, Gone with the Wind. Meanwhile, the Washington bureau was crammed into a two-story building in Glover Park with a piece of paper on which someone had scribbled in Magic Marker Cable News Network, taped to the front door. There was a cemetery across the street, where we ate our salad-bar concoctions from Safeway on pretty days, and a strip club called Good Guys a few blocks up. All an easy walk from our bachelorette pad on Dent Place.
Ted Turner’s idea of interior design was to ship old, stained sofas and chairs from his other offices; Wendy and I cleaned them up as best we could. Staffers doubled as carpenters, nailing together the anchor desk. The tech crew hoisted a giant satellite dish onto the roof; we ordered legal pads, reporter’s notebooks, Bic pens, and Rolodexes. We’d heard that Turner didn’t like Styrofoam, so Wendy brought in coffee mugs from home. The penny-pinching could get aggressive: one day a memo came around warning against the overuse of toilet paper.
Stories began to circulate about Turner that gave us all pause. During an orientation for anchors and producers in Atlanta, he showed up unannounced. All eyes turned to their fearless leader, eager to hear his words of wisdom and inspiration.
“I just want to tell you, we are going to beam this shit all over the world,” he said in a slurry drawl. “And I’m gonna do this because Russia is gonna bomb our ass.”
SINCE THE SHOP was nonunion, we could do anything—write, produce, edit, run equipment—without fear of a grouchy tech guy yelling at us for touching something we weren’t supposed to. You’d often hear, “Hey, we need someone on the camera!” and whoever was available would jump up, stand behind the massive cantilevered thing, and swing it in the direction of the person sitting at the anchor desk. We were also the makeup artists, rolling giant tubes of beige goo down guests’ faces.
But there were a few pros in the mix. Bernie Shaw, our lead Washington anchor, commanded the newsroom like Captain Kirk. When he was preparing to do a cut-in, if the sound of keys clacking in the background started to build, he’d wheel around and boom, “Typewriters!”—and everyone would pretend to type until he was done. Dan Schorr, who won an Emmy for his coverage of Watergate （landing him at number 17 on Nixon’s enemies list）， was our senior correspondent. Because he was （gasp） 62, people referred to him behind his back as “Dan Schorr, Senile Correspondent.”
Bloopers were us: A director cutting to a live shot of a monkey at the Atlanta Zoo, who happened to be masturbating. Studio cameras crashing into anchor desks; a correspondent caught wiping his nose （sorry, Mike Boettcher）。 Our White House reporter, stationed outside the hospital where President Reagan was recovering after being shot by John Hinckley, began extolling the awesomeness of another network’s catering spread—unaware that he was on live television. No wonder we were nicknamed “Chicken Noodle News.”
And yet even at CNN there were fairy-tale moments. Somehow, Wendy and I managed to snag a pair of seats at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association Dinner. It was a big deal among the Washington press corps and the hottest ticket imaginable for “underlings and young idiots like us,” as Wendy later put it, all aflutter in the semiformal dresses we’d bought at Loehmann’s. The Hilton glittered with big-name talent—Tom Brokaw, Connie Chung—although none more glittery than Jane Pauley in a taffeta ball gown, a sleek French braid trailing down the nape of her neck. Wendy and I were obsessed with her—every morning we huddled in front of Wendy’s portable TV to watch Jane co-anchor the TODAY show. In the lobby, people tried to get close to her and grab a brief audience, maybe even a photo.