Rule number one: Never hire friends. I hired a friend once and you know what happened? Worked out great. But that's me. You couldn't handle it.
This week, we're going to take a look at shows that focus on a place near and dear to my heart -- newsrooms. My entire professional career has been spent in journalism, and it's always fun for me to watch such shows and think, "Yeah, that's close," or "Wow, so, so wrong." It's like if you live in New York and watch the Law and Order people tooling around and think, "Well, wait. If they started in Greenwich Village, why are they going through Tribeca to get to the Upper East Side?"
So we'll start with the benchmark. Back in the day, Lou Grant was a good example of how you could be a good manager with a somewhat less than stellar personality. Starting out on the Mary Tyler Moore show, Ed Asner's portrayal of Grant was a bit of a caricature for the sit-com format. It was a different time, for sure. Grant is a hard-nosed old-school journalist, somewhat sexist, somewhat insensitive. Hard-drinking, workaholic, matter-of-fact and not the touchy-feely type.
Grant: You want a raise, is that it?
Ted Baxter: Lou, I've written a figure on this pad.
Grant: Ted, I've written two words on this pad.
Ted Baxter: Lou, I thing there's some room for negotiation between that figure and those words.
Impatient with foolishness, Grant wasn't really one for game-playing, figuratively or literally.
Grant: (Upon being told the rules of a word game where each player must come up with a word that starts with the previous word's last letter): Does this game go on forever or does it have an end?
Mary: It ends when a person can't think of a word.
Grant: Oh, I'll start. (Turns to Ted.) Box! (Ted cannot think of a word and says nothing.) Game's over.
Unsurprisingly, Grant was a lot of fun to watch on MTM. When he got his own show, he moved from broadcast to print. This version of the character, while keeping the same basic personality, was moving from sit-com to drama, and thus became much more serious in his attitudes and manner.
A precursor of Hill Street Blues in terms of ensemble casts chasing different aspects of an issue, Grant was a gruffer, tougher version of Frank Furillo, despite working in a more comfortable and less dangerous environment. He knows his stuff and isn't about to let anyone else phone it in on his watch. In one episode, In one episode, Rossi writes a story about a wilderness survival school without ever attending. Grant is less than pleased with the result.
It was a good piece, but you didn’t really get involved in it . . . You didn’t take the course yourself. Your piece didn’t have the smell of the forest. You didn’t make the reader taste dirt in his morning orange juice.
But like Frank, he is a person of great heart and dedication to his staff and his craft. When another reporter files a profile on an Orthodox Jew turned Nazi leader and the result is the man's suicide, Grant is there for the guilt-stricken reporter.
We can’t weigh a story and say we shouldn’t print it because somebody might get hurt. Sometimes people do get hurt. Sometimes careers are ruined, governments are brought down. But, if the story is there, we have to print it. It’s our job. If you are going to be in this business, you are going to have to learn to handle it . . . A man is dead. A sad, twisted, tormented man. But, a human being, nevertheless. By writing about him, you help us understand him and maybe ourselves a little better. You have done a great job, and I am proud of you.
Sometimes Grant's enthusiasm misses the mark a bit, however. While his news instinct is always sharp, he can forget that sometimes a little pre-coaching will go down much easier than Monday morning quarterbacking.
Grant: You know what might be nice? Comparing the business 40 years ago with today. I’m talking about that as the focus of the piece. How the neighborhood has changed, his inventory, advertising practices. Is the standard of living better or worse now? Wouldn’t that be something?
Rossi: I’m on the last graf. Why didn’t you suggest this earlier?
It's a fair question. Rossi might not have written the best story possible, but he had put in the work, and it would have been far better if brainstorming on the "focus of the piece" had been hashed out before the shoe leather was expended. Grant, one hopes, learned a lesson in planning despite later grousing that nobody wants to work as hard as he does to get it right.
Another positive aspect of Lou Grant that persisted across both shows was his willingness to foster new talent and give people a chance. In the drama, Grant takes an interest in Chris, a young copy editor aspiring to be a reporter. Grant gives Chris material to practice writing news stories and then critiques his work.
Why do it? Well, he says it best to Mary Richards.
You had zilch [qualifications]. Did I ever tell you the reason I hired you? A little run. A tiny little run in your stocking on your knee. You kept trying to cover it up. And I thought to myself, ‘What kind of a girl is this who is so afraid of a thing like that?’ Do you think that was a bad reason to hire you? ... It was damn sweet. That’s what I have been trying to tell you. There are plenty times in life when you do the competent, responsible thing. But, every once in a while, we need to be damn sweet. If we’re lucky, we’ll never have to regret it.
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