Former NBC News Correspondent Edwin Newman is dead at 91.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/media/16newman.html?src=mv
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/media/16newman.html?src=mv
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EDWIN NEWMAN, RIP
- Thread starter NeilRattigan
- Start date
He did Saturday Night Live not long after retiring and was actually quite funny. I believe it was the 1985 season.
Some people may also recall he did news segments (straight - not for laughs) during David Letterman's ill-fated NBC midday show in the early 1980s.
He was a very talented and capable reporter.
Some people may also recall he did news segments (straight - not for laughs) during David Letterman's ill-fated NBC midday show in the early 1980s.
He was a very talented and capable reporter.
About a week ago I thought about Edwin Newman because I stumbled onto my copy of his book
Strictly Speaking up on a high book shelf. I thought he must have passed away long ago. Glad to hear he made it to 91.
He was a very good newsman, and a good writer. He was a self-appointed guardian of the English language, much like William Safire, who also passed away recently.
In the early 70s, Newman narrated an NBC documentary about Marin County, California (north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge) that portrayed its affluent citizens as a bunch of spoiled, self-absorbed brats. I lived there at the time (though I was far from affluent). Many people there were outraged, and raised a big fuss about the documentary...as if to further reinforce Newman's point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH_-crnkh7Y
Strictly Speaking up on a high book shelf. I thought he must have passed away long ago. Glad to hear he made it to 91.
He was a very good newsman, and a good writer. He was a self-appointed guardian of the English language, much like William Safire, who also passed away recently.
In the early 70s, Newman narrated an NBC documentary about Marin County, California (north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge) that portrayed its affluent citizens as a bunch of spoiled, self-absorbed brats. I lived there at the time (though I was far from affluent). Many people there were outraged, and raised a big fuss about the documentary...as if to further reinforce Newman's point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH_-crnkh7Y
This quote stuck in my mind:
"So much on TV over the years has been good," he said at the time. "The question is raised, why can't there be more such good, worthwhile, deserving programs? But I have never met a payroll or had to sell time on the air. It is easy to be critical."
I always enjoyed listening to him.
"So much on TV over the years has been good," he said at the time. "The question is raised, why can't there be more such good, worthwhile, deserving programs? But I have never met a payroll or had to sell time on the air. It is easy to be critical."
I always enjoyed listening to him.
...shortly after beginning his Late Night tenure, Letterman was delighted to recieve one of Mr. Newman's occasional admonishing letters on the proper use of English on the show. It wasn't Ed's correction of some forgotten incident that Dave was happy with, but later in the same letter Ed had misspelled the word "pizzeria." Dave milked that one for all it was worth for the rest of the week ;D ...buster2 said:
...BTW, with Newman's passing, I believe there are only two reporters left alive from NBC-TV's coverage of the JFK assassination -- Robert MacNeil and Charles Murphy (or has Murphy passed on while I was looking the other direction?)...
Lkeller said:
Actually, according to another YouTube clip of that same documentary, the NBC Reports episode aired in the late 1970s--notice the infamous "block N" logo of NBC in the intro, something NBC didn't begin until New Year's Day 1976, well after the "early 70s." From what I can tell, this aired sometime between 1976 and 1979. Just a minor correction for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW7Wj-xbinE&feature=related
Both Robert McNeil and Charles Murphy are still with us, happy to say.
The NBC Nightly News profile on Newman was predictably cursory: the piece emphasized the "crises" that he covered, such as the assassinations of JFK and MLK, Jr., but forgotten, not surprisingly, was his role in a rather thankless task: working the daytime desk during the 1970s and 1980s (the five-minute updates during game shows and soap operas, when the audience was mostly women), and playing a second banana on Nightly News during the 1970s, filling in for the likes of John Chancellor and Frank McGee. Those two jobs are probably what most people remember--usually people pay little attention to who the newscaster is during a crisis, and we must remember that documentaries and other prime-time news specials were avoided by viewers like the plague back in the day--networks ran those primarily to please the FCC and to promote the evening news.
BTW, Newman got the David Letterman 1980 daytime job purely by coincidence: he had been on the daytime desk for years by that point, and apparently no one else, no surprise here, wanted the job. Letterman's first romp on NBC was an experiment that bombed badly, as the piece failed to mention--some people may have gotten the impression that it was actually his first late-night show on the Peacock Network between 1982 and 1993. That's one sign there of carelessness, caused by the belief that "aw, nobody gives a damn anyway." Newman would have been the first to set them straight, much as he did people who used improper grammar.
BTW, Newman got the David Letterman 1980 daytime job purely by coincidence: he had been on the daytime desk for years by that point, and apparently no one else, no surprise here, wanted the job. Letterman's first romp on NBC was an experiment that bombed badly, as the piece failed to mention--some people may have gotten the impression that it was actually his first late-night show on the Peacock Network between 1982 and 1993. That's one sign there of carelessness, caused by the belief that "aw, nobody gives a damn anyway." Newman would have been the first to set them straight, much as he did people who used improper grammar.
Mike Stroud said:
Thanks for that correction, Mike. I was thinking it was a few years earlier. I seem to remember that it aired when I lived in Marin, and I moved to SF in late 78, so I'll guess it broadcast closer to 76. A couple of years ago, I saw a clip from the documentary in which Newman is saying that the average home price in Marin was approaching $85,000 - which he said for its shock value, because that was high at the time, compared to most anywhere else in the U.S. By the late 70s, I'm sure Marin home prices averaged over $100K.
buster2 said:
The best part was Newman singing the song "Don't forget me when I'm gone!" (If that is the song's title).
The passing of Ed Newman is yet, in my opinion, another nail in the coffin of pure journalism on television today.
F
FreddyE1977
Guest
His "Strictly Speaking" was a wonderful book. Very entertaining, and revealed his encyclopedic knowledge of the English language. Well worth going to your local library to check it out.
R.I.P. Edwin Newman. One of the last links to an era when Television Journalism really meant something.
For many years, my house watched NBC-TV for both regular and special news coverage. Edwin Newman was certainly a part of that. R.I.P.
Newman was a writer. It was a time when broadcast reporters came from newspapers, magazines and wire services. In the beginning was the word and they still believed words mattered more than pictures and sound bites. The people doing these tributes to Newman and earlier Daniel Schorr don't really seem to get it.
I recorded on VHS the WEWS-TV 5 Cleveland Morning Exchange news/talk program on December 17, 1997 (The station's 50th anniversary) in which which the hosts (Fred Griffith, Connie Dieken)discussed with longime News Anchors John Hambrick (1967-75) and Ted Henry (1975-2009) the state of Television News...Hambrick asserted that the main problem with TV News at that time was the lack of qualified news writing and Journalism..I suspect Mr. Newman would agree..
MattParker said:
The quality of news writing and grammar has diminished over the years only to be replaced by pretty faces and flashy graphics.
If Edwin Newman was to apply for a television job today it is very likely he wouldn't be hired because Mr. Newman would be overqualified.
If you haven't yet caught it, I heartily recommend Newman's NBC News special, "A Worlds Fair Diary". It's up on YouTube in six parts; here's part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA5LVf0p9TM
There are at least two howling puns in it, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA5LVf0p9TM
There are at least two howling puns in it, too.
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