Dan Rather's current gig at HDNet must not be paying that well. A student journalist at the University of Texas sat next to Rather on an early morning flight on discount airline JetBlue from Austin to New York. Of course, the student, Caroline Page, wrote about it:

It was 6:45 a.m. and I was boarding the early morning Jet Blue flight from Austin to New York City. My blurry and emotionally drained state had obviously fogged my perception because when I said "excuse me" to the gentleman sitting in the aisle seat of my row and scooted past him, I did not recognize he was Dan Rather. After I gathered my bearings and settled into my window seat, I realized out of the corner of my eye that Dan Rather, remarkably one of the most visible and well-known journalists of the 20th century, was sitting directly next to me reading The New York Times.

Regardless of the fact that it seems like Rather's preferred mode of transportation these days is to fly coach on low-fare airlines, it's a real charmer of a college newspaper piece. He even made her a journalism reading list. Awwww.