Bill Beutel

Douglas Cooper and George O’Brien conduct a talk about journalism with Bill Beutel, reporter, correspondent, and anchor at ABC TV, the flagship of the network, as Bill drives our trio from a Pelham, N.Y. speaking engagement to his studios in New York City.

The Interview

I called a major Speakers’ Bureau in the City, and was able to reach a senior executive I'd known slightly at prep school about ten years earlier. ABC Newsman Bill Beutel was in his 'stable' of speech-makers, and was to take the stage at The Manor Club in suburban Westchester County in about two weeks. He arranged for me to piggy-back on Bill Beutel's presentation and Q&A.

I suggested that we drive into town with Bill and carry out our interview during the forty-minute drive. Bill was amenable, so George and I clambered, with our equipment, into Bill's car and organized our mics and wires (even on a 'remote' taping, we always carried a back-up system, since we had only one opportunity to 'get it right').

George asked about Bill's choice of Philosophy as a major at Dartmouth. He felt it was good preparation for a career as a journalist. He noted that the conflict of ideas was always tied with another subject, such as history or sociology, so it went far beyond theory. He gave the example of economics and philosophy, without which, he felt, he could not understand the wars of the present, which "are more fiscal than military".

Bill also explained that his one year at law school sharpened his ability to separate "the wheat from the chaff,” in deciding what was important among the day's events.

We skipped to the issues he faced journalistically. He conceded that his newscast was imperfect because the camera lens picks up (and leaves out) a portion of the story. And he said it was his job to make value judgments and add perspective.

I asked how coverage had changed since he started in 1962, in Ohio. "Well then the featured news of the day might be a fire or a pileup on the highway. Today, it's demonstrations, the inner city, political malfeasance.

We pressed Bill on "news fatigue,” choosing the 'lead story,' and why voluminous 'good news' isn't always a story: "the news is not a catalog of what's normal, and of those who would be virtuous".

Bill was, as I'd anticipated, affable and down-to-earth. He was an attractive man, and a stable force in New York news. I think these qualities put him in the ratings lead (sometimes seesawing with CBS) through his forty years in New York television. You could tell, watching him deliver stories, that he was a man of moderation, never falling into the too-good-humored or the too-cynical categories. And, he'd treated us as he might the a major media outlet, which, for me, was the mark of a grounded professional.

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The Douglas P. Cooper Distinguished Contemporaries Collection (1967-1974) contains rare interviews with influential writers, statesmen, artists, songwriters, journalists and others who have left their mark on our culture.

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