Word: savitch
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...nearly five years later, Savitch's troubled life is being resurrected in two searing biographies: Almost Golden by Gwenda Blair, a veteran magazine writer, and Golden Girl by Author Alanna Nash. The books tell many of the same painful stories, but while Nash writes a cautionary tale about personal ambition gone amuck, Blair sets Savitch's rise and fall against the larger backdrop of television-news history. Ultimately, neither writer completely succeeds in conveying what made Savitch run, perhaps because her personal demons were so well masked...
What is clear, however, is that the anchor had a remarkable gift for talking to a TV camera. Blair recounts that Savitch once told a colleague that her trick was to focus on a spot in the middle of her head and project it through her eyes to the other side of the lens. "She would send this energy force out like a laser," he recalled. "You'd step back and say, 'Christ! What was that...
...Savitch labored long and hard to master her craft and fight her way into a male-dominated profession. She was quick to realize that TV news was more about show business than journalism. As a fledgling reporter for KHOU-TV in Houston, she ended a report about an exhibit of World War II bombers by posing on a wing like a vintage pinup. Viewers loved it. She moved to Philadelphia in 1972, studied speech and became a celebrated anchor after starring in a series of personal reports about such topics as rape and childbirth...
...when at 30 she achieved her dream and joined NBC News as a Senate correspondent and weekend anchor, Savitch still lacked the ear-to-the-ground reporting skills needed to cover a demanding beat. Hired to add some allure to , the news division's stodgy image, she was also expected to break stories on Capitol Hill and provide sparkle at numerous public appearances. She quickly foundered. "The people who brought her in here abandoned her," said Tom Brokaw. Yet even as she was being demoted for incompetence, the network flacks and a willing press continued to tout...
Both authors conclude that Savitch had no one to blame for her troubles but herself. Instead of seeking help or a change of assignment, she slipped ever deeper into the embrace of drugs -- mostly cocaine, but also pills -- and a retinue of sycophants. Her first marriage lasted ten months; her second ended after five months, when she found her husband hanging lifeless in the basement of their Washington town house. Her self-abuse finally became evident to millions when she slurred her way through a harrowing 43-second NBC News Digest. Three weeks later, Savitch, 36, and a date...