Lehrer Regretful About Going It Alone On News Show
The good news is that Robert MacNeil is going to write more books. So is Jim Lehrer. Both newsmen, in fact, have novels out this fall.
But after Friday, only MacNeil will have more time to write them. Lehrer will become sole anchor of the hour-long PBS weeknight news program the two have shared for 20 years.
As partners on “The MacNeil/ Lehrer NewsHour,” they have been colleagues and close friends, Lehrer said - so close that Lehrer feared he might break down on the air and so has taped his 5-minute goodbye to the man he calls Robin.
“I know I wouldn’t get through it. It’s not that I would be embarrassed to sit there at my desk and cry like a baby, but (the farewell) just wouldn’t get said.”
The partnership has brought honors to the news program and to both men. “It’s something that works,” said Lehrer. “It works on every conceivable level, professionally, publicly and as friends. He’s a very wise, good man, beyond being the best there is in the business. I’m going to miss that in my daily life.
“It never occurred to me that he would go first. When I had the heart attack (in 1983), I thought, ‘Oh well, I’ll write my novels, or make movies, and not do this.’ I never imagined his leaving first. But he’s been in this business 40 years, and daily journalism’s a tough go.”
The team to whom they have been compared, NBC’s Chet Huntley in New York and David Brinkley in Washington, worked together from 1956 to 1970, but reportedly were not close friends.
MacNeil and Lehrer first paired up in 1973 to deliver PBS’s Emmy-winning coverage of the Senate Watergate hearings. Two years later “The Robert MacNeil Report” premiered, a half-hour, single-issue program in New York, with Lehrer as Washington correspondent.
The next year the program became “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report” and was distributed by PBS; in 1983 it was expanded to 60 minutes and became “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.”
The newscast is carried by more than 300 PBS stations and is seen by 2.3 million Americans nightly.
After Lehrer suffered a heart attack and double-by-pass surgery, he quit smoking and added a mid-day nap to his routine. He says that is the key to handling his very full schedule, which includes writing plays as well as novels. He’s already finished “The Master Operator,” about a Trailways bus driver; and he’s finishing one about the CIA.
Lehrer has written nine novels (“Viva Max!” also became a film), two books of non-fiction and three plays and has done several television specials including “My Heart, Your Heart.” But he said he isn’t concerned about being so busy that he suffers another heart attack.
“I’ve learned the hard way,” he said.