Big story

With Pope John Paul II’s health declining, CBS News executive Marcy McGinnis traveled to Rome to negotiate a 10-year lease for the rights to broadcast from the roof of a hotel overlooking St. Peter’s Square when he died. That was nine years ago.

“I thought I was very smart making a 10-year deal,” she said. “It should have been 15.”

Or more, judging by the 84-year-old pope’s tenacity.

A papal succession is one of those big stories that television networks can assiduously prepare for, and they have. The pope’s death will be the first such succession in the era of 24-hour news.

“John Paul II in some remarkable way embodies the human experience in our time in a way that perhaps no other figure has since Churchill,” said George Weigel, one of the pope’s biographers.

“When a gigantic figure like this leaves the stage of history, that is an opportunity to reflect upon that history and what it meant.”

But TV networks shouldn’t be so concentrated on history that they miss how the event will hit people in the heart, said ABC News President David Westin.

“There are a number of people who are connected emotionally to the pope,” Westin said. “We need to understand this.”

ABC was the only American network to have a full-time religion reporter, Peggy Wehmeyer, but the job was eliminated several years ago.

To a large degree, the networks outsource expertise, signing up commentators like they locked up retired generals for the Iraq war. Weigel, for instance, signed an exclusive deal with NBC News six years ago.

News organizations have also prepared a raft of material ahead of time. CBS has largely completed an hourlong prime-time special on the pope that will air upon his death, McGinnis said.

“I have been interviewed for obituaries on the pope for the last 10 years and he’s outlived everybody, even some of his biographers,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit weekly magazine America and author of “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church” (Harvard University Press, 1998).

For American networks, the coverage will likely resemble the aftermath of former President Reagan’s death: several hours of live coverage when the news breaks, then occasional special reports on the broadcast networks. Expect cable news networks to be nearly wall-to-wall on the story.

The big challenge will be explaining the traditions and the conclave of cardinals that selects a new pope without making eyes glaze over, said John Stack, vice president of news gathering for Fox News Channel.

“Can you imagine what this is going to be like for 24-hour television?” said Jeffery Sheler, a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and president of the Religious Newswriters Association.

“There’s not going to be much news. The conclave is private. The cardinals when they come out of a closed event aren’t going to be giving interviews. It will be journalists interviewing journalists.”

It will be less a religion story than a political one, dependent on old-fashioned reporting, said Mark Lukasiewicz, chief of specials for NBC News.

When John Paul II was selected in 1978, the room where the cardinals met was swept for electronic bugs, said Marjorie Weeke, who coordinated press coverage for the Vatican until her recent retirement.

“They take an oath and if they come out of the conclave and break the oath, they have to go in and ask for forgiveness,” Weeke said. “It’s a very serious thing.”

In 1978, cardinals over age 80 weren’t allowed to vote for a new pope but weren’t sworn to secrecy, so they went out and told journalists what was going on, said Jesuit author Reese. Now that loophole has been closed.

“Once the election is over, every monsignor in Rome will claim to know the inside story,” Reese said. “The trouble is, will they really know? Or are they just doing this so you’ll buy them lunch?”

Reese has posted a primer for journalists covering a papal succession on the Internet. Since he hasn’t signed an exclusive arrangement with any network – he said he’s not interested in the money – he’ll be one of the most visible faces on TV when that time comes.

There’s one question he won’t answer: He won’t make any predictions on a new pope.

“Part of it is I don’t want to look like a fool when it’s all over,” he said.

Besides, he added: “I don’t think anyone in the world is going to know who is going to be the pope.”