While his Today show colleagues might garner more ink, Al Roker has an impressive story to tell. Now in his 11th year on the job, the man New York magazine has twice named “Best Weatherman” does a lot more than track hurricanes. “He’s the glue that holds the show together,” says Today‘s executive producer Jim Bell. “Al can do anything – and he has.”

When he’s not being P.Diddy to Matt Lauer’s J.Lo (the pair’s Halloween costumes have become a Today show signature) the tireless “features reporter” has done his share of celebrity interviews, including his sit-down with Star Jones the day after she was booted from The View.

But Roker has had his sights set on a bigger arena for some time. He founded Al Roker Productions in 1994, which produces shows for Lifetime, Oxygen, the History Channel, Court TV, Food Network, and PBS. His burgeoning empire is nicely documented on one of his two Web sites. The other site, AlRoker.com, is directed more towards fans — there’s even a line of Al Roker merchandise he’s designed — where Roker says he “answers all my emails.” Here, he answers us.

Position: Weather and feature reporter on Today
Resumé: Began his broadcasting career while in college as weekend weatherman at WTVH-TV in Syracuse. Worked at a series of stations as weathercaster in Washington, DC (1976-1978) and Cleveland, Ohio (1978-1983), before landing the job as weekend weathercaster at WNBC in New York in 1983. Joined Today in January 1996. Author of four books, including the best seller Don’t Make Me Stop This Car! Adventures in Fatherhood.
Birthdate: August 20, 1954
Hometown: Queens, New York
Education: B.A. in Communications, SUNY Oswego (“Home of the 120-inch snowfall”)
Marital status: Married to ABC News 20/20 correspondent Deborah Roberts; three children (Courtney, 19, Leila, 8, and Nicky, 4)
First Section of the Sunday Times: “The arts section. It usually has the stuff I’m interested in — theater, movies, music, television. I already get the news I need at work.”
Favorite television show: “That’s a toss up — if you went with comedy, I would say it’s between 30 Rock and Scrubs; if it’s an hour long drama, I’d be hard pressed to choose between 24, Lost, and Heroes. P.S. I will also say I’ve never watched them on TV, I’ve only watched them on my iPod. It’s a kind of intimate viewing experience. I put my headphones on — the sound is incredible. I’ve got a 42-inch TV in my family room — I don’t miss the size. Although Meredith [Vieira] gave me one of these things you put on — they’re like video glasses — you look like Gordy from Star Trek. I’ve not tried them yet though because I don’t want to look like a total geek. I am a geek, but I just haven’t completely surrendered to it.”
Guilty pleasure: “Spending as much time as possible with the kids — although that’s not something you should feel guilty about. I just take such immense pleasure in getting home, picking them up from school, which I don’t get to do enough — maybe twice a week. And, I love to cook for them. They’re favorite meal I make is a toss up between roast chicken or meat loaf, roasted Brussels sprouts and wild brown rice.”
Last book read: Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

What would you say are the qualities you possess that have helped get you to where you are?
Not being afraid to make fun of myself and basically looking a little worse than about 90 percent of the population.

What do you mean by that?
I think I’m just an average to below-average looking person, and when you look at TV most of the people on TV — with the exception of most sports people — everybody else is good-looking. People feel a little more comfortable with somebody, who, at best, looks as good as them and, in many cases, looks a little worse.

So, has anything changed for you as a result of your dramatic weight loss awhile back?
It’s funny. The conventional wisdom was you’re a jolly, fat weatherman and are people going to relate to you differently. Now, I’m the jolly, thinner weatherman. In fact, what’s very heartening is the positive reinforcement. I go out there and people say, “You look great!” or “Keep it up!” It’s nice to know people that are rooting for you.

You had a very long interview with Star Jones the morning after she left The View. What do you think of her incredible physical transformation?
She looks spectacular. This is a great opportunity for her — I think people forgot that this is a highly intelligent, very smart lawyer. She is a brilliant legal mind. A lot of that got lost in the frivolity of The View. I think people will get to see what attracted the networks to her in the beginning.

The television weather jobs — especially in New York — have become so high profile and great stepping stones. What do you make of that?
It’s nothing new, really. Frank Field was one of the first. Willard Scott, my mentor, was a huge success in Washington, D.C. and then made the jump to the networks. Bob Ryan, who was before Willard — Willard and Ryan did a swap and he’s now at WRC in Washington. Dave Price went to CBS; he was at Channel 5 (FOX) in New York. So the weather person has always been the “lightness” in the newscast, whether it’s local or national. It’s just the way it is. It’s a chance for everyone — the viewer and the folks in the control room — take a breather, a breath.

Today underwent a huge change last year with Katie’s departure and Meredith’s arrival. In your view, how did that effect the core group of talent?
What’s great about it is we don’t really think about it. It just is. The show just is. Meredith is just there. When I say that, I mean she is Meredith and the show is there. I wouldn’t even say the show has changed. The very nature of the show is the participants of the show change — Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Jane Pauley, Deborah Norville, Katie Couric. They’re all part of the history of the show and the show goes on. The show is bigger than we are. At the end of the day, it just keeps churning along. I’m very proud and protective of the show. At the end of the day, people can say what they want and spin what they want. The fact of the matter is, we’re number one, we’ve been number one for 11 years. End of story. I feel it’s because the sum is greater than its parts.

Your role on Today has evolved and expanded with the addition of the third hour and will likely continue to do so with the upcoming fourth hour. How would you describe your career trajectory on Today?
I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve worked for people both locally and nationally who gave me a chance to get out of the box. When I was at WNBC [in New York] I did a lot of pieces. When I started on the Weekend Today show, I started doing a lot of stories and that continued when I moved to the Today show. It’s continued — I’ve been very fortunate in that folks have said, “He can do more than just weather,” and have given me a chance to report a wide range of stuff from wild fires in California to the last interview with Charles Schulz, which was just heartbreaking, and everything in between. I don’t take it for granted because not everybody gets that opportunity.

What would you say is the best on-air story you’ve ever done?
Wow … [sighs] … Getting to interview Rosa Parks, and interviewing Charles Schulz, for completely different reasons. Rosa Parks being one of the people in this country’s history that showed literally that one person can make a difference and basically changed this country. Not just for African Americans, but for everybody. And Charles Schulz because I’m an amateur cartoonist and revered him and got to do two interviews with him. One for the 50th anniversary of Peanuts, and his last interview before he passed away. On a professional level, and as an amateur cartoonist, that was very meaningful.

You’re also a very prolific producer. How did that come about?
I never intended to be on television. It didn’t cross my mind — I wanted to be a writer or a producer. When I went to college at the end of my sophomore year, my department chair, Lou O’Donnell, got me up for a job to do weekend weather. I got the job and everything followed from there. Right around 1994, I started this company [Al Roker Productions] really just to launch a Web site. I did a show for PBS called Going Places and a produced the ins and the outs for that, and then I did a special for the Food Network under Judy Gerard. She said do you want to produce it, and I said, “Sure.” That kind of started the ball rolling. I enjoy it. I enjoy creating television and in a way, it makes me a better on-air person. As an on-air person, you tend to take for granted what the producers do from our executive producer Jim Bell, all the way down to our line producers and my producer, Jackie Olensky. They kind of make these things happen, and as talent you kind of walk in and go, “Okay, make me sparkle.” I look at it now from both angles because most of the shows I produce I’m not in and I have to deal with talent and try to find really good talent and build shows around them. I really enjoy doing that. We’re doing stuff for the Food Network. We’ve got a law enforcement show coming out that I can’t talk about. We’re doing a lot of stuff for the NBC-owned and -operated stations. We produced a documentary on the 50th anniversary of Profiles in Courage. For the History Channel, we did an hour-long documentary on the seven African Americans who were finally given their medals of honor for [their service during] World War II. We did a special for E! on behind the scenes at the Miss USA Pageant. We run the gamut of television.

What are the qualities of a good producer?
I think you want to be honest. You don’t want to pander to your audience and without sounding too Zen, be true to what you are doing. Don’t try to bend this too much. If you’re far afield from what you set out to do or from what the talent is comfortable doing, you’re not going to make a good television show.

You’ve been posting regular journal entries on your Web site for a long time. Given the spate of blogs that are out there now you must feel like something of a pioneer.
I actually start “blogging” in 1994. I called it a journal. I kind of laughed when I heard about blogging. I asked, “What is that?” Then I said, “Oh, wait a minute. I’ve been doing that and calling it a journal.” I’m not making any Al Gore claims, but I’ve been doing it for a while. I find it fascinating. The Internet is such a democratic place in that you can be a guy in your basement with a Web site and have the same access to people as NBC Universal or Sony or MTV or any of those places. You never know what’s going to be the next big thing, a la YouTube. We’ve been experimenting with some stuff I don’t want to give away … I think people are really over-thinking this.

You’ve written a great deal about fatherhood in your books (Don’t Make Me Stop This Car: Adventures in Fatherhood). Much is made of your former (Couric) and current colleagues (Vieira) being working mothers. How has being a father affected you professionally?
It’s multi-layered. You’re trying to juggle the time you spend at work and this job has some travel with it. You want to raise your children with the proper values — just because Daddy and Mommy are on TV doesn’t make us any different or better than anybody else. I want my kids to see me doing “normal” things. I cook dinner, I wash the dishes. I’m not saying we don’t have a great life because we do. I’m not downplaying that at all, but I don’t think we live such an extravagant lifestyle. If someone else is paying we’ll fly first class, but if Daddy is paying, we fly coach unless Daddy has enough frequent flyer miles so we can upgrade. You try to keep your kids grounded.

Do you have a professional motto?
Willard [Scott] gave me two bits really good bits of advice early on. He said, “Never give up your day job and always be yourself.” I can do all these other things, but the best thing is having the Today show. You can do all these others things and be all these other things, but if your persona is as close to who you are as possible, at the end of the day, it’s a lot easier because you’re just who you are.

[Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.]

Glenn Beck isn’t a reporter — and he doesn’t play one on TV. “What’s frightening is that people like me are being lumped in with journalists. I make a point to make sure people know I’m a conservative and I’m not a journalist,” he says. “People are getting their news from Jon Stewart because it’s entertaining, but there’s no real credibility there. They try to make [news] more entertaining and go for the hot stories. You can’t do both. You can’t be credible and lead with Anna Nicole Smith every night.”

Beck prefers to tackle politicos and the PC police with impassioned monologues tempered with the comedic bits that have become his cable show’s signature. Love him or loathe him, he’s registered some seismic waves on the pop culture Richter scale. Media Matters for America, a liberal Web site that tracks conservative commentary, continually chastises him for his controversial comments including these bon mots: antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan is a “tragedy pimp” and former President Carter is “a waste of skin.” As of January ’07, he’d increased viewership in his timeslot by 65 percent and by 88 percent in the coveted 25-54 demo. His November ’06 special, “Exposed: The Extremist Agenda,” which chronicled how Middle Easterners are being schooled on hating Americans was the highest-rated program in Headline News history.

Earlier this year, Beck inked a deal to join Good Morning America as a guest commentator, after Diane Sawyer herself wooed him over a meal. (“She actually asked me to lunch!”) As he recalls, the unlikely duo talked about “how television is trapped inside of itself.” Clearly smitten by television news’ über blonde, Beck adds: “She is amazing. I walked away from that meeting thinking, ‘She really gets it.'”

Having survived drug and alcohol addiction (“two glasses a day — but tall glasses, and all Jack Daniels”), with the help of AA and his newfound Mormon faith, Beck has said he is “genuinely happy for the first time in my life in the last 10 years,” despite having earned the title of “Worst Person in the World” from MSNBC’s Keith Olberman numerous times. It’s clear from our conversation with Beck that a far greater slight would be not noticing him at all.

Name: Glenn Beck
Position: Host CNN Headline News, and a nationally syndicated radio broadcaster
Resumé: Began his career in radio broadcasting at 13 after winning a local DJ contest and wound up with three different jobs at three radio stations in Seattle. Became a successful Top 40 DJ, but by 30, “alcohol and drug addiction took over.” He went into recovery and became a Mormon. In January 2000, he moved to Tampa, Florida and landed a gig at WFLA (AM) hosting The Glenn Beck Program, a mix of comedy and conservatism. Within 18 months, the show became No. 1 in that market. He joined CNN Headline News last year. Currently, his radio broadcast is heard on nearly 200 stations and XM Satellite radio. Author of The Real America (Pocket, 2003) and the upcoming An Inconvenient Book (Threshold Editions). Editor-in-chief of Fusion, subtitled “Entertainment & Enlightenment” — a monthly mix of right-wing editorials, humor, and future obituaries (including a recent entry chronicling the death of Katie Couric’s career at CBS and the demise of 44-year-old broadcast itself — “Katie Couric’s career and the CBS Evening News died last week in what investigators are calling a double murder. A suspect, Katie Couric, 50, is being held for the slayings.”)
Birthdate: February 10, 1964
Hometown: Mount Vernon, Washington
Education: Courses at Yale for one semester (“No big deal.”)
Marital status: Married to second wife Tania, with four children; Mary, 18, Hannah, 16, (both from his first marriage); Raphe, 2, Cheyenne, “about to be one” with his current wife
First section of the Sunday Times: “The front section. I just read it cover to cover.”
Favorite television show: “It was 24, but not this season. I think it’s jumped the shark. It’s probably a tie between House and The Office.”
Last book read: “It’s by Bob Thomas on Roy E. Disney” (Building A Company, Disney Press)
Guilty pleasure: “‘My Grandmother’s Chocolate Cake’ from Allen Brother’s steakhouse. Each piece is 3,000 calories. It’s unbelievable.”

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?
I’d be bluffing if I told you I knew. The best explanation I could give is working with incredibly talented people, being on the same page with them so they could create their dreams while helping me with mine. And, I think, being stupidly honest. Just saying what you mean and meaning what you say. The only thing that is shocking in this society is knowing how people really, truly feel because we live in such a climate of fear. Whether it is the left or right, nobody ever says what they really, truly believe. Most of us when it comes to the real issues of life — I don’t mean politics — are the same. Most of us are hiding from something we did or something we’re ashamed of. The big scars in life — they are generally the same in nature. We hide it and we think, ‘Gee, if someone found out about this, they’d hate me.’ When indeed, if someone found that out about you, most likely you’d find more people around you saying, ‘On my gosh! I can’t believe you said that. I feel the same way.’

Do you think your outspokenness about your battle with drugs and alcohol has helped your career?
Yeah. It’s counterintuitive but… I was just talking about this on the air. I picked up The Globe. My stepmother was flying in from Seattle to stay and she said, ‘I picked this up in the airport and look who got a story on alcoholism?’ They had done some story on me about my alcoholism and had some LA psychologist comment on me. I didn’t even know this thing was running. We were just laughing about it, [like] shut up about the alcoholism thing!

I read several interviews where you said after interviewing Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) — the first Muslim ever to be elected to Congress — and saying to him, in part, “I feel like saying, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies,'” you would take back the wording of the question if you could. How often do you feel that way?
A lot. I’m on four hours a day, five days a week. As much as people write up the things I say, I also do a lot of comedy. You can’t do that live for three hours a day without making mistakes. I’m celebrating my 30th year in broadcasting. How can you do something every day for thirty years and not say something and go, ‘Boy that was stupid.’

With Imus’ firing, do you feel the punishment fit the crime?
No. I think the crime, if you will, was absolutely despicable. There’s absolutely no defense for Imus. I was surprised by the surprise. He invented the ‘shock jock.’ He’s been saying these things forever. No defense for him, but I worry about any culture that decides to impose through fear, intimidation, protests, boycotts — whatever — to shut someone off and get them pulled off the air. I think that’s for the individual to decide by turning the radio off. Let the market work through ratings. I was equally horrified when I heard a few days later that Tom DeLay said it was time to pull Rosie O’Donnell off the air. I don’t agree with almost anything Rosie O’Donnell says, but I’m worried about the McCarthy-like atmosphere where people think we should curb speech. If you really appreciate freedom of speech, it’s not less speech — it’s more.

What did you make of the noticeable silence from all the journalists who had been regulars on Imus’ show?
We all have our own masters. We all have jobs. Wherever you draw that line is a personal decision. I personally think that if you didn’t think Don Imus was a racist, you should have said so. I don’t think he’s a racist, I think he hates people equally. What I spoke out on — and it was a difficult thing to do because we’re in hit-and-run media — was your right to be despicable. There were people in the media as soon as this happened on the left and the right — Tom DeLay and Keith Olberman — they both said, “Here’s the list of the next people that we need to get out.” That’s not America. I thought we learned our lesson from the McCarthy days. You’ve got to able to be human — to make mistakes. I make them. Everybody makes them. Let me put a microphone in your office for four hours and you tell me if you’re not going to say something stupid that you’re going to have to apologize for. One universal common phrase in real life is, “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.” If we can’t accept that from people in media who are live every day, then we need to brace ourselves for a sterile, boring environment with absolutely no diversity and no debate. That’s not good.

Have the powers that be ever privately asked you to back off or tone it down?
No. I have been asked to explain. For example, with Keith Ellison — my producer was like, “What were you thinking?” It wasn’t calling me on the carpet. I said it to Keith when we went off the air, “I didn’t mean it that way.” He was like, “No, I understand.” I knew it was a mistake. I don’t think I’ve ever been called on the carpet for anything. I had lunch with [CNN Worldwide president] Jim Walton recently. We didn’t really trust each other when we first started. We didn’t know each other. I said to him, “I hope I’ve proven myself to be a reasonable partner with you.” He said, “Everything that you’ve said — whether I agree or disagree with it — doesn’t come from a position of hate or anything else. I think you’ve proven yourself to be a very reasonable partner.” I think he has, too. The day I come out with something hateful is the day I should be called out on the carpet.

What’s the best thing you’ve done on your show?
The best thing we’ve done is twofold: remained fairly true, on a daily basis, to who we are; but that is also the worst thing we’ve done, in a way. We’ve been running so fast, so hard at times, that we have also not done that. We have to keep coming back and resetting because of the grind. That’s what I find so fascinating about television — it is neverending, always there. I tell people all the time, “You might like sausage, but you don’t want to see it made.” It is, “What are we doing tomorrow?” Panic! I don’t have enough time. I run a magazine, my show, my radio show — I get so bogged down that I don’t have time to step back and say, “That’s what everybody is doing, but it’s not who were are.”

You’ve said that the sound of Hillary Clinton’s voice makes “blood shoot from my eyes,” and that she “sounds like the biggest nag on the planet.” When you say she “cannot be elected president because there’s something in her vocal range,” is that comedy or your real opinion?
I thought it was really funny, but I also mean that sincerely because if Fran Drescher was running, I’d be saying the same thing. If Fran Drescher was the biggest conservative on the planet, I’d be saying the same thing about her. It really has nothing to do with her political leanings, even though I’m not a fan of Hillary’s. There is something about her when she speaks and really gets strident — all I hear is, “Get up off the couch and take out the garbage.” I just don’t think that’s electable.

Do you think this country is ready for a female president?
I think that if this country is not ready to elect a woman, we’re in bigger trouble than I think we are [in]. I find it amazing that there are people that would say, “We can’t elect a woman” or “We can’t elect a black” or “We can’t elect a black women.” What is that? I’d vote for Condoleezza Rice — from what I know about her now — in a heartbeat. This is stuff that is east of the Hudson and west of Hollywood. I don’t think people think that way. I think people want someone who is real. Bill Clinton, like him or not: The guy came off as genuine. Hillary doesn’t. Maybe she’s the most genuine person in the world, but she comes off too calculated.

Rudy Giuliani has got that bullhorn moment in him. He’s honest. That’s what people want. They want somebody who is not trying to be perfect, who is not trying to say, “I’m everyperson.” I’ve voted for people that I’ve strongly disagreed with on a lot of things, but I prioritize. I’m never going to vote for a guy who agrees with me on everything because that person is lying because I’m a psycho. How can you rule the country if you agree with me on everything?

What do you think Obama’s chances are at winning the democratic nomination?
I think that if this were not “The Clintons,” he would be the candidate. I think the Clintons have far too much power and Bill is just too powerful of a motivator. He’s good and she’s so packaged. With all the money and everything else, I can’t imagine her not getting the nomination. If she makes a critical misstep, then he’d be the guy. I disagree with almost everything he stands for politically, but I admire the man and that he is honest and has an ounce of integrity. God help us all, we need someone like that.

The biggest recent story has been the Virginia Tech massacre. Did you air footage of the shooter?
I think I aired a six-second clip and a nine-second clip. I’ve said I regretted doing it. I think I talked myself into thinking that it was okay to run it. I’m not sure if it was or not. I didn’t like the way some were just capitalizing on, “Hey, look at this. Mayhem! Crazy dude with a gun.” I aired part of it because, in my head, I was trying to make the point of playing him saying, “I’m anti-rich” and playing him saying “I’m Jesus Christ” because my point was we completely missed the whole story, and that was this is a sick guy in a culture that is all about fame and fortune, and this is what you get when you couple those things. That’s why I played it. Before I played it, I said, “I’m going to show you these specific clips and you’re not going to see this guy’s face again.” I don’t even say his name. I never said his name on the air because that’s what he wanted.

Are you at all worried that Rosie O’Donnell is going to pick you for her next celebrity smackdown?
(Laughs) Not at all. I think Rosie O’Donnell is a microcosm of the hypocrisy that the media just doesn’t see. I’m on the front of everybody’s burner the minute I misspeak and give a poorly-worded question to Keith Ellison. How many months ago was that and I’m being asked again about it in this interview? Rosie O’Donnell can get on ABC television and say the United States government blew up World Trade Tower number seven — that’s insanity — and nobody is standing up and saying, ‘That doesn’t belong on television.’ I don’t believe she should be fired. I’m a capitalist. As long as there is a market for it, God bless you. [Editor’s note: This interview took place before the announcement of O’Donnell’s departure from The View due to a “contract dispute.”] She can get on and say those things, but God forbid I get on and say, ‘Ten percent of Islam, give or take five percentage points either way, is out of control and wants to kill every single one of us.’ It’s insane.

[Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to Fishbowl New York and writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.]

[NOTE: This interview contains excerpts, and has been edited for clarity.]

One need look no further than at a list of titles of Kate White’s nonfiction books to get a glimpse into what makes the perennially perky editor tick. Her 1996 book, Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead But Gutsy Girls Do, has become something of a mantra for its author. White has climbed many ladders in publishing, and seemingly done so leaving admirers, not gossip, in her wake. When she’s not writing Cosmo‘s “cheeky” cover lines, White seemingly spends every spare moment cranking out bestselling books — most notably her five novels in which crime journalist Bailey Weggins ferrets out the felonious among Manhattan’s glitterati. Her latest, Lethally Blonde, hit stores last week. The prolific author will debut her latest nonfiction work next month — its Cosmo-inspired title: You On Top. On her Web site, the advice tome is described as offering insight on everything from “when to act like a bitch and when not to” to how to discover “the moan zone on a man’s body that most women ignore.”

We’re all ears.

Name: Kate White
Position: Position: Editor-in-chief, Cosmopolitan
Resumé: Before landing her current gig as editor-in-chief of in 1998, White helmed several other titles: Child, Working Woman, McCall’s, and Redbook. She began her editorial career as an editorial assistant at Glamour (White won the magazine’s “Top Ten College Women” contest and appeared on its cover) and worked her way up, becoming a feature writer and columnist.
Birthdate: September 3 (“A year far before most Cosmo readers were born!”)
Hometown: Glens Falls, New York
Education: BA in English, Union College
Marital status: Married to television syndicated host Brad Holbrook; two kids: Hunter, 19, and Hayley, 17.
First section of the Sunday Times: “Always page one — I’m a news junkie.”
Favorite television show: Law & Order (the original) — “Being a murder mystery writer and reader, I love the plots and twists.”
Guilty pleasure: “Great Bordeaux”
Last book read: The Woman in White by Wilkie Colins. “Nora Ephron recommended it in her book. It’s from the 1800s and it’s intoxicating.”

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?
I definitely think that being a good idea person — I have my weaknesses — but of the things I do do well is that I’m a good idea person. I think that’s how you get noticed when you’re in an articles department and as you’re working your way up whether you’re an associate editor, junior editor, or a senior editor. People with ideas get noticed.

I also think I’ve probably been a bit of a rule breaker. I’ve been fortunate enough to work for bosses like Art Cooper [Family Weekly] who found that engaging. You can work for a boss who doesn’t like rule breakers, but if you work for a boss who likes someone like that and let’s you push the boundaries, it’s actually great. You run with it and the next thing you know, they’re rewarding you for that.

A lot of it is putting one foot in front of the next because sometimes you see people on staff — they may be thinking, “I should shoot that idea to them” but they don’t get around to it. I was a little bit of procrastinator early on in my 20s just because I didn’t always know how to complete a task. I once did this wonderful study — “Understanding Reader Response” — when I was at Glamour and I never handed it in. A couple of years later when I was having lunch with [then editor-in-chief] Ruth Whitney, I told her about it. She said, “God, Kate that is so interesting. Why didn’t you ever hand it in?” The notion how to finish projects, take those next steps and bring it to fruition and not procrastinate — I bet there are a lot of people sitting at their desks in their 20s who have thought of an idea that they want to present or told their boss they’d get them something and haven’t. If you can really triumph over that by using time management tricks or whatever, I think you can really make a difference.

What magazines did you read when you were younger?
I read women’s magazines like Cosmo, Glamour, and Mademoiselle, but I even as a college girl loved Esquire. Just as men say they read Cosmo to understand how women think, I think it gave me a sense of how guys thought. It’s actually interesting — it was Esquire that led me to be a mystery writer.

How?
They once did a great story — “Everything a Young Man Should Know.” It was all these little things that you needed to know and one of the boxes was the “Ten Best Murder Mysteries Ever Written.” I’d always read Nancy Drew, but I hadn’t really graduated to other stuff. I thought this is the perfect list to start with. I read those ten, fell in love and became a maniac in terms of mysteries. As I began to read them, I decided one day I’d love to write one.

So you knew early on you wanted to write mysteries?
Oh yeah, definitely. I think it was right around the time I graduated or shortly afterwards. I just always loved the macabre. If you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was a magazine writer and a private detective.

Who is “Bailey Weggins”? Has she changed over the course of writing the books?
I think she has evolved a little bit in that she had a bad breakup. She had her tail between her legs in the first couple of books. Now she’s feeling together, she likes her job — she covers celebrity crime for Buzz magazine. And, of course, there’s a lot of that these days. She’d be out covering Paris Hilton right now!

How much of Bailey comes from your own life?
One of things that I would say is that because she’s a freelancer — and even though I’ve worked for corporations — I’ve got the soul of a freelancer. I get to work that out in a nice way by writing about someone like her. Maybe there are little things about her that are like me. Sometimes people say, “Oh Kate, that sounds like you, you are Bailey,” but I see her as different. She’s a little bit more ornery in terms of her view of the world. She’s more jaded. Partly because she is a freelancer and she has an irreverent take on things because she isn’t caught up in having to be part of the system. But like me, she loves New York, she likes to dress cute. So it’s not that I’m totally unlike her but I don’t necessarily think, “I’m Bailey Weggins.” Plus, she will go into an abandoned house with a dead body smell coming out of it, and I’d be like, “Get out! Get out!”

She sounds like the perfect character for Lifetime or TNT. Has there been any talk or interest in developing a television series or movie based on the books?
Lifetime has optioned the books for a series called “Bailey Weggins.” They’re working a script right now for a pilot.

Who would you like to see play her?
I don’t know. I think it would be great if it was someone who wasn’t particularly well known but so claimed the role the way Sarah Michelle Gellar claimed Buffy [The Vampire Slayer]. If I could have someone come in and do it the way she did it, that would be great.

You’ve helmed several women’s magazines and have this flourishing second career as a novelist.Hhow do you juggle it all?
I write on the weekends on Saturday and Sunday mornings because my kids don’t get up until one and my son is in college part of the year. I think one of the key things when you have some sort of secret dream is to be aware that there may be moments when you are juggling so much that you are going to have to give yourself a pass at that time in terms of doing it.

With my nonfiction, I wrote those books while I watched Law & Order after the kids were in bed because nonfiction just doesn’t require the same muscle in your mind. Then, with fiction, I started it when they were a little bit older and what I discovered was I couldn’t do it at night. It’s impossible. My brain just didn’t want to form a sentence. The first couple of years I wrote my mysteries, I’d get up at 6:15 on Saturdays and Sundays. By putting in a few hours of work each weekend day and also trying to aim for a certain number of pages — I try to get six pages done in a short period of time. If I had the whole day, I’d aim for ten. I try to get six on Saturday and six on Sunday, and one or one and a half every day during the week.

That’s pretty ambitious considering your day job.
To get a page of a book done in the mornings isn’t so bad. What I try to do is plot it out when I’m taking a shower. See the page and work out the dialogue. If you were to walk into the bathroom, you’d see my lips moving a lot, and I’m not singing “Feelings.” As I’ve gotten to know the character through five books, it’s so easy for me to know what phrase she would say. In the early years, I would say, “Would Bailey really say that? I don’t know.” Now I feel like I have her down pat.

What’s a typical day like for you?
The very early part is pretty typical because I take my daughter to school, but once I hit Cosmo, you never know what’s coming. I usually get in about 8:15 a.m. It could be anything from Ludacris coming by or one day two friends of mine who are members of [the British] parliament came in for a tour. Now with overseeing Cosmo Radio, our huge Web site relaunch, Cosmo Books — my days vary so much. Even though I try to get home at a reasonable hour because of the kids, I literally do not stop working — and this is terrible because I’m not a workaholic. There is rarely a night where I’m not still working at midnight. I try to get home a little after six. I’ll eat with my daughter and husband, and while my daughter is doing her homework, I just sit there next to her and grind it out for the next few hours.

So you do most of your editing at home?
Yeah, because of all the brand expansion now, I’m in meetings a huge part of the day. I used to be able to block out a few hours for editing during the day but I do not have that [luxury] any more.

What’s the biggest challenge you face as an editor today?
So many things are competing for the attention of the reader. Glamour is no longer a major competitor on the newsstand. Our newsstand sales are significantly more than double theirs now. But there are lots of others vying for our readers: from the celeb magazines to YouTube. If you’re not careful, it could be death by a thousand paper cuts. How we compete is by dazzling the reader and making her wonder: What will they do next month?

What’s changed at Cosmo since you became its editor?
The big area I’ve added since I’ve been here is health. Our reader is really interested in being proactive about her health. She’s also interested in stories that deal with social issues involving young women whether it’s date rape or the whole notion of partying too hard. But when it comes down to it, women think of us as “the Bible.” So it’s that mix of fashion, beauty, and entertainment — even though it shifts a little bit, those components have been there forever.

You also got rid of some features that had been around forever, like the awful sounding “Agony Column.”
Irma Kurtz had written that for years and I liked her but it was just too negative sounding. What was funny was that just as we decided not to renew her contract, Glamour picked her up. I never understood why. I don’t know. Maybe our reader is just a little hipper than theirs. It was a voice that was left over from another era.

During the era of the Scavullo cover in the ’70s and ’80s, Cosmo launched the careers of so many models. Will we ever go back to that and move away from the celebrity cover?
One great thing we’ve done at Cosmo is continue to do model covers every year not what we were doing when I first got here which was five or six. At that point we were still launching careers — Rebecca Romijn, James King, Molly Sims were all on the covers in my early years and that was before they were out in Hollywood so I feel like we still had that power then. We had an adorable girl on two covers last September and March — Tori Praver — but she’s had enormous success. I know she got several huge campaigns because of the covers. We’ll probably do a model cover in the fall. I was just down the hall looking at portfolios so we are planning to shoot someone for the fall. For us, I hate to be held hostage in having to use celebrity covers every month. The great news is we can still sell two million copies with a model.

For the Cosmo reader, who is the hottest celebrity role model out there right now?
Our reader loves women who are truly fun, fearless females. It doesn’t surprise me that Fergie sells over two million copies or that Carmen Electra did. Katie Heigl was a huge seller for us. Beyoncé was huge. They are women that not only have gorgeous faces and bodies to die for, but they also have this great confidence in themselves. They exude that and to the reader, that’s what they relate to. You just look at Beyoncé and think, “She just really loves her life.” She doesn’t seem at all like this neurotic creature who is tortured by fame.

Who is the most over exposed celebrity that needs to go away?
(Long pause) Oh … I think … if we didn’t hear anything more about Paris Hilton from this day forward I think we would be okay as a civilization.

Did you ever put her on the cover?
No.

Would you ever?
I would say our reader really relates to women who’ve got real jobs and are doing really incredible things, and have worked hard for it. There might be some point in time where she pulls it all together and has a particular career but until then, she doesn’t really fit what we look for in a cover. Even the models we pick are hard working who’ve come to New York to try to make it as models and actresses.

What do you make of the across the board obsession with her? She’s no longer just in the tabloids. Her arrest was the lead story on Joe Scarborough’s MSNBC show the other night. Why do we care if she goes to jail?
It’s hard to answer because I don’t care myself. My guess is our reader doesn’t care either. I’m not saying this is Paris, but she doesn’t have a lot of patience for someone she can’t truly admire.

What’s the difference between the Cosmo edited by you and the magazine edited by Helen Gurley Brown?
It’s more irreverent. It’s more sophisticated. Helen, of course, did a fabulous job.

Helen is famous for sending people notes. Are you in touch with each other?
She’s great. She’ll often send me a little note saying she likes a particular story or she was impressed with a sale of an issue after getting wind that something sold — she’s very thoughtful that way. She always reads my novels and sends me notes afterwards so I’ll be sending her Lethally Blonde, of course.

Do you have a motto?
My motto is “go big or go home.” Some girls on the staff use that expression when they’re out having fun, but I think it’s the perfect motto for working at Cosmo or for life in general. As long as you’re going to put in the time, make sure you do as fabulous as possible.

What’s your dream job?
This one. It’s almost illegally fun to edit Cosmo.

[Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.]

Leave it to Tina Brown to prove F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong. Forget second acts. The British-born Queen of New York is on to her third. Having presided over Manhattan’s media elite throughout the ’90s, she’s come roaring back with a vengeance. Her first book, The Diana Chronicles, an exhaustive take on the life of Princess Diana, hit No. 1 on the New York Times‘ nonfiction list this week. Virtually overnight, the highly public failure of Talk and her short-lived cable television series Topic A with Tina Brown — both gleefully reported at the time by her detractors as the decline and fall of the once untouchable editor — have been reduced to mere footnotes.

Looking back at Brown’s career, one could argue she was fated to have what might prove to be her greatest individual success due to her unique and enduring connection to the late princess. At 25, Brown became the editor of the musty, centuries-old British magazine Tatler, fortuitously tying her fortunes and those of the previously irrelevant glossy to a certain other quintessentially British girl who, over time, would prove just as brilliant for her ability to tap into the zeitgeist. Brown once remarked that Diana’s wedding did for Tatler‘s newsstand sales “what the O.J. Simpson chase did for the ratings at CNN.” In 1985, just as S.I. Newhouse considered shuttering Vanity Fair because it wasn’t generating enough buzz, Brown — who’d been tapped to be its editor-in-chief less than two years before — penned a cover story on Diana, famously dubbed “The Mouse That Roared.” The issue’s runaway newsstand success helped buy Brown more time to create what evolved into the holy grail of celebrity reporting. It’s worth nothing that one of Brown’s most memorable pieces written during her tenure as editor of The New Yorker focused on — who else? — Diana, in which Brown recounted her last lunch at the Four Seasons with Vogue‘s Anna Wintour and the princess just weeks before that fateful night in Paris.

Name: Tina Brown
Position: First-time author
Resumé: Editor of Tatler 1979-1983; editor-in-chief Vanity Fair 1984-1992 until moving to The New Yorker; founded Talk Media (including Talk Miramax Books) with Bob and Harvey Weinstein; helmed the book imprint and the namesake magazine until it folded in 2002; host of CNBC’s Topic A with Tina Brown from April 2003-May 2005; former columnist for the Washington Post
Birthdate: November 21, 1953
Hometown: Maidenhead, England
Education: M.A from Oxford at St. Anne’s College
Marital status: Married to Sir Harold Evans, president of Random House and former editor of the Sunday Times of London; two children: George and Isabel
First section of the Sunday New York Times: “The op-ed pages because I’m always hungry to have my mind changed. To be honest, I usually find it more stimulating at times to read the Wall Street Journal because I usually disagree and that makes me more engaged.”
Must read British papers: “The thing about England is that there are so many papers I prefer to sample all of them every morning, so I get them all. I like the Times, the Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail — which is the great glorious daily rag you have to read and has a lot of human interest stuff that is irresistible.”
Favorite television show: “I still like Charlie Rose a lot. He does a great job. 24 has jumped the shark — it used to be my favorite show. The Sopranos — I don’t know how the hell I’m going to replace it. I think Army Wives is pretty interesting. I could become addicted to that.”
Guilty pleasure: “Yellow tabs — National Enquirer, Star. Gotta have it. The cover stories about Bush and Laura on the brink of divorce — it’s wonderful fantasyland. It really is fun to read sometimes.”
Last book read: David Talbot’s Brothers: “Terrific and gripping. I haven’t read all the Kennedy books because being English, I didn’t read them as they came out. I am a kind of case-closed believer but I loved having David pick apart some of my views.”

With so many books having been written about Diana what made you want to enter the fray?
I felt it was important to look at Diana in the context of her era and the culture of England and the media culture at the time. Those three aspects of the world that Diana was moving in seemed, to me, as important, in a way, as the story of Diana herself. That was what attracted me — her story itself is riveting — but she’s also an emblematic life. Through her, I was able to talk about class, media, and celebrity culture.

Any surprises along the way?
I found writing about her early life the most fascinating part of all. It’s like Bush’s lost years in the National Guard [laughs]. There was a moment — just a little tiny moment — when Diana Spencer wasn’t famous. The Spencers were a very complicated family. I think they were far more jaggedly at odds with each other than I had realized. I thought simply that her mother had left and it was a sad thing, but when I went deeply into it, I could see that this family had been plagued with ill feelings.

When did you start writing the book? How much time went into that and the reporting?
It was two years, start to finish, from the moment I got the advance to the moment I delivered it. I did a year of reporting and a year of writing, but during the writing I was continuing to report. I would then be reporting a lot on the telephone, going back for second and third interviews. Basically, I had to spend the first year doing that first round of interviews. Frequently, when you get to the place in the book when that whole story occurs, you know a lot more by the time you get there and you know more things you want to ask, so it’s great having made the personal contacts that you can go back for second and third interviews. That was what I was really doing that second year.

What was the biggest challenge you encountered in doing the book?
The biggest challenge was the amount that had been written about Diana — so much of it was inaccurate. You just have to keep guarding against stuff that is tabloid legend. At the same time, you’re also dealing with a very closed society. They may not like it when you get it wrong, but also don’t necessarily want to help you get it right. Fortunately, I got very good sources who could usually verify what I was after. It wasn’t any easy thing to get that. One had deploy a lot of persistence at times. There are some people who are just tired of talking about [Diana]. Some people have gotten so badly burned by some tabloid that they feel they don’t want to talk to a journalist again. I came to see that there were certain sources that were reliable and others that you decided not to go to at all.

One of the other things about biographies is that sometimes somebody who was there and saw everything still wasn’t helpful, because although they want to tell you, they don’t have any particular powers of observation or recall. There was one person who was right in the middle of everything in the last days of Diana — the funeral time at Balmoral — and I thought, “What a drag. This person doesn’t have any eye.”

I found myself wondering about this question as I read the book and couldn’t come up with an answer: Did you like Diana?
I came to like her more and more, actually, as the book wore on because the more complicated she became and the more of a “piece of work” she could be, the more — I guess — I related to her. [Laughs] If she had been a goody-goody, she would not have been as interesting. It was her complexity — on the one hand she was capable of tremendous acts of compassion and had this extraordinary gift for communication with humble people, people who were sick. It was genuine. It was real. At the same time, what was equally real was her canny workings of the media and her devious and even vindictive behavior, which was sometimes a real surprise. I always liked her because I just feel she was up against something that was very, very hard to deal with. I know enough about the English “establishment” to know what it’s like when they close ranks because they are scared. Unlike America, that has many interlocking establishments, England is still dominated by one. Even though it’s changed a lot, the “establishment” is still very much around and can make your life difficult and unpleasant, and they did for Diana all the time. She was immensely brave. The way she took on the House of Windsor never fails to astonish me.

What would Diana be doing now if she’d lived?
Aside from having her first facelift? [Laughs]

Would she have really gone for that?
Oh, I think Diana would have always been very much about keeping her looks as best she possibly could, because she did have a fabulous sense of how to look great.

With Diana, her love life would always torpedo her. This is also what makes her interesting and human. When she was on top — and she was in the last months of her life — when I met her in July [1997] she was so together, so ready for her second act and so much a woman of the world and yet, at the same time, she winds up in the tunnel in Paris with Dodi because she was always was sabotaged by this needy insecurity — this desperate need to have a man who loved her — which she couldn’t find. It was all going to be in the end about what happened there.

Why do you think your harshest reviews came out of the U.K.?
That’s a much more competitive culture. There are a thousand and one newspapers competing in one tiny market, so the goal is to be different from the guy who wrote last week. It’s really about that. Secondly, it’s because Diana herself is an industry. Diana herself brings out the lovers and the haters in the English press. She remains very controversial. There are people there with a lasting irritation about Diana, and anyone that writes a book that gives Diana any kind of a due is also up for the knife, as it were.

Lifetime is doing a special based on the book. What’s your role?
It’s an hour-long special looking at Diana’s life, based on my book. They’re basically using a lot of material from the book and I’ll be the linking perception. I’ll be on air.

Speaking of TV, any desire to do another show?
It was fun doing Topic A. It’s funny, on the book tour, it’s been amazing how many people told me they loved Topic A. I was sort of surprised and delighted actually, because I think we did do a pretty good show. It would be fun to do something based on books and popular culture and current affairs. But I know in this media climate it’s not likely that a show of that kind is going to get done. I’m not lobbying for it. I’m more interested in writing and getting on with another book.

You told The Guardian you “missed being a journalist.”
I miss editing. I wouldn’t want to do another startup magazine just because it’s a five-year battle to see if you can get the magazine properly displayed on the newsstand. It’s not a good era to start up a magazine. Editing comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s not like I’m wedded to only editing in just one form.

What’s your take on the growing influence of new media?
I think it is incredibly influential and great voices are coming out of it more and more. Every day the Internet is being used to do interesting new things. I actually think we’ve seen the great shift between print and online. I get more and more of my news online, although I happen to love — and always will — the whole tactile experience of reading print. I very rarely wait, though. The weekly newsmagazines that I enjoy reading — I read them online. I don’t wait to get the magazine.

Which sites do you make a point of looking at?
Newsweek has one of the best Web sites. I like ABC’s The Note. That’s very good. I like smokinggun.com, the Huffington Post, Andrew Sullivan’s blog. I read mediabistro.com every day. I sometimes check out the fun on TMZ.

mediabistro.com: What would Diana be doing now if she’d lived?
Brown: Aside from having her first facelift?

Celebrities must be terrified by the news TMZ is doing a show, don’t you think?
Totally terrified, but at the same time there’s almost like this new world of celebrity, which is like a proximate world. I kind of feel it’s become so remote from the celebrities themselves — that more and more there are these strange clones of celebrities that they write about that don’t have anything to do with the real person. Whenever you meet a celebrity, they’re nothing remotely like their image. If they could only find a way to do themselves in 3-D animation, it would solve all problems. There’s just way too many outlets and too few celebrities.

Who out there in the celebrity culture do you find most interesting?
I think the whole thing to staying interesting is by being more aloof. One of the things that’s interesting about the enduring old stars is that they always saw a way to dole out something to the public but keeping things private. When you think about Paul Newman, Robert Redford — even Clint Eastwood — how much do we really know about them? We really don’t know very much about them at all. Amongst the movie-acting hemisphere I can’t think of anyone I’d buy a magazine for. [Pauses] Actually, Brad Pitt is a pretty interesting guy. I’m told he’s far more interesting than he seems. The thing that’s difficult is no one wants to write about someone’s actual work at the moment. It’s all about the personality.

Steve Martin has written a book that’s coming out in November, Born Standing Up. He sent me the galleys. It’s absolutely wonderful — it’s his memoir on his life as a stand-up comic. What’s fantastic about it is, it’s all about process, about how he became a comic, how to structure a joke, what’s it’s like to be in front of an audience. What’s fabulous about it is it’s all the stuff that gets left out of celebrity interviews. I saw the interview Larry King did with Al Pacino and it was really good because Al Pacino was able to talk at length about how he got his accent for Scarface, which to me is so much more interesting than hearing about some tired old go-round about affairs and houses and lifestyle. I think we’re all so OD’d on lifestyle. I’m more interested in the life.

What do you consider your greatest success?
I do think The New Yorker was a very exciting success. As much as I loved Vanity Fair and still do, I still feel The New Yorker was the harder challenge. The stakes were so high with The New Yorker. I felt all the time I was doing it there wasn’t an option to fail. If the magazine’s not a viable proposition or set for closure — and it was really going down so badly when I took it over. It was so important to revitalize this magazine — the letters, narrative journalism, high standards and the writers that could take three weeks to six months on a story could still be allowed to do that work. What I did realize was that no one again ever was going to start up a magazine that would allow literary journalists to go off for months at a time to study and write and do something, so if we failed it would be a horrible consequence.

What’s been your biggest disappointment?
Well, obviously, I was disappointed when Talk folded only because the point at which when Talk folded was the same point at which S.I. Newhouse considered folding Vanity Fair in 1985. I’d been with Vanity Fair for a year and a half when Condé Nast thought it wasn’t building fast enough and didn’t show any signs of traction. It was a real moment when it was going to be folded until I begged for another six months to show them what I could do. With Talk, we were 17 percent up in advertising in those last three issues. The circulation was climbing. We had a very difficult launch, but it got really good in those last six months. It was a real shame that it wasn’t allowed to continue. What’s also amazing about Talk was how amazing the staff turned out to be. The people I hired have all gone on to the most amazing jobs. [Senior editor] Sam Sifton is now culture editor at The New York Times, [senior editor] Danielle Mattoon is deputy culture editor, [founding editor] Tom Watson is national editor of Newsweek, [executive assistant] Margaret Aro is a producer at 20/20 for Diane Sawyer. [Editorial director] Maer Roshan is, of course, doing Radar. It was an amazing group of people at Talk. I’m very proud of that.

You must feel some sense of vindication towards your critics who happily reported on Talk‘s demise and Topic A‘s cancellation.
[Laughs]. It’s exciting as hell to be No. 1. I’m well aware that there’s a lot of books out there, and I really didn’t expect this. I’m absolutely thrilled. I didn’t expect such terrific reviews.

Why?
I guess it’s called managing expectations. [Laughs] I’d hoped to get a couple of nice ones but I really didn’t expect such good ones at so many places. It’s selling in the U.K. I’m No. 3 this weekend in England. It’s really wonderful.

Will you be doing another nonfiction book?
Probably, yes. They [Doubleday] want me to. What I don’t want to do is jump into a book just to do a book. I really have to get another passion going. I went right up to the deadline with my [Diana] book. I was doing stuff right up until March and then went straight into the foreign editions, so I haven’t really had a breathing space to get my mojo back. I have to run on empty for a bit. I haven’t gotten a galvanizing idea yet, but I’m sure I’ll get one.

Any truth to the reports that you’re considering doing something on Tony Blair?
That was suggested to me by somebody else. I don’t know how that got into the papers. I don’t think that’s for me. I’d like to do something American. It was very awkward being in England all the time. I prefer to be here. [Laughs] I think it’s very difficult to write well about a living person, actually. It’s so complicated because you’ve got their interventions all the time, and their version of it. It’s actually better if you can go in and clear the thicket of a life that you can see whole.

Ideally, what would you like to see yourself doing over the next few years?
I feel wonderfully poised for a new phase. I’m not sure yet what that will be. Very likely it will be another book. I’m interested in theatre; I’m interested in producing, in editing. I’m very much just feeling creative, so I could go in any direction. Probably by the fall I’ll have more of a sense of what will be fun to do.

Looking back over your career thus far, how would say you’ve got to where you are?
[Sighs] Oh God … [Pauses] Workaholism and luck? I don’t know.

Do you have a motto?
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.

It seems only fitting that Jim Bell wound up in a job whose duties could be defined as being both Today‘s team captain and head cheerleader. A former all-Ivy League defensive tackle who cut his teeth in television working on NBC’s Olympic coverage, the morning show’s executive producer says the analogies between sports and morning television are endless. As Bell explains: “You’re preparing for opponents and coming up with strategy and doing so with a group of people that come together where there is a lot of work that goes on off camera that people don’t see, the same way they don’t see the work that happens for the athletes when they’re not on game day.” A seasoned TV vet who oversees every aspect of one of television’s most venerable — and profitable — franchises, Bell quarterbacked Katie Couric’s fond farewell, Meredith Vieira’s arrival, and is currently developing a playbook for Today‘s fourth hour.

Name: Jim Bell
Position: Executive producer, Today
Resumé: Fresh out of college, Bell began his career in television joining NBC in 1990; two years later was tapped to work on the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Worked on every subsequent Olympics since; between the games has toiled on a cross section of major sports events as a producer including the 1997 NBA Finals, the French Open, and Wimbledon. Created and produced “Gameday NY” for Mike’d Up on WNBC. Joined Today in current capacity in April 2005.
Birthdate: July 20, 1967
Hometown: Branford, Connecticut
Education: B.A. in government, Harvard University
Marital Status: Married to Angelique; four sons Jimmy, 11, Lucas, 9, Emmett, 8, and Nicholas, 4
First section of the Sunday Times: “Real Estate. It’s just juicy. I think a lot of people grab that real estate section to see what’s going on out there. It’s a little bit of fun, fantasy — a little bit of everything.”
Favorite television show: “The Wire. It’s a brilliant ensemble cast featuring a lot of people you probably never heard of. I just think it’s painfully real.”
Guilty pleasure: “Anything from Williams-Sonoma. They just have the coolest little gadgets. I do love to cook and I will often put those things to good use. They’re not wasted in the cabinet.”
Last book read: Uncle Wiggly’s Nighttime Stories. “It’s a great, great series. Old school.”

How would you say we’ve gotten to where you are?

Ah … [laughs]. That’s a big question. The short answer: I don’t know. The more specific answer has to do with the unlikely similarities between morning television and the Olympics.

Did you always think you’d wind up in television?

No. I thought I’d go to law school and maybe end up in politics, but I took a little detour and lived in Spain. I was hired over there to push a guy in a wheelchair [Randy Falco, then vice president of Olympic programming] who had snapped his Achilles tendon playing basketball. From that experience, I caught the attention of [NBC Sports President] Dick Ebersol. I got to know him and he suggested that I take a job working on the Olympics profiles unit, which goes around and does all the ‘up close and personals.’ I took him up on it and then worked on the Barcelona Olympics, had a wonderful time and thought that television was, in fact, something that I might be interested in doing.

After Barcelona, I was fortunate enough to be asked by Mr. Ebersol to join him in the sports division. It was this incredible period for network sports television because you had Michael Jordan winning championships for the Bulls, we were covering Super Bowls, the World Series, the Atlanta Olympics, Wimbledon, and preparing for the Sydney Olympics. The sense of camaraderie and family really came together when we were covering these events and that’s really what I loved about it. When some of the major sports properties went elsewhere, I personally refocused almost entirely on the Olympics. Sydney, Salt Lake, and Athens were events that I was very much involved in and they involved a huge amount of production planning.

What are skills you developed on those jobs that have served you well in your current position?

I think it’s important to have a plan and keep things as simple as possible. The more complex and bigger the task is, the more the need is there to keep things simple. A single-mindedness to the task at hand is something I’ve brought to those events in the past. It’s been something I’ve been able to share with the people I’ve been fortunate enough to work with on those events. In the case of the Olympics during those blessed 17 days and nights, or in the Today show’s case, every morning from 7 [a.m.] until 10 [a.m.], it helps keep people on the same path.

How has the work you did juggling star athletes translated into working with talent at your job as executive producer of Today?

Whether you’re an editor, a gofer, or Matt Lauer, you appreciate clarity and focus. All anybody can ask for in an executive producer is a sense of direction and sense of guidance: “This is what we’re doing and here’s how we’re doing it.” As long as you have an answer for that, I think everyone appreciates it. There’s really no mystery with talent versus anyone else in professional life: they bleed, they put their pants on one leg at a time.

How does your background in sports translate specifically into working in morning television?

It’s competitive. It’s rigorous training whether it’s physical or mental. At 10 o’clock, we don’t put our feet up and say, “I’ll have my latte now.” We launch into the next day, the next week, the next month.

What’s a typical day like for you?

I get up at 3:45 a.m. and it’s usually wheels up from [my home in] Connecticut at 4:15. I get in around 5. We make any sort of changes to the show around 5 and put in our last pitches on how we think the show should stack up and what, if any, overnight news has developed. 5 to 7 is a fairly busy time and we try to make it as productive as we can and react. It’s a simple thing, but the show is called Today — so hopefully there’s not a lot of yesterday in it. We do the show; I try to get out of the control room by 9 to get a jump on the next day. I watch the third hour in my office, have a meeting. If I’m lucky, I try to get a workout in and then at 10:15 or 10:30 we launch into the next day. By 11 o’clock, we really want to have a show we could put on the air if we had to for the next day. It’s an important shift. There was a mindset at one point, given the way that news happens and the speed of it, I think, that things could be left until later and I learned early enough it was better to give the producers, correspondents, and reporters a chance to get the right interviews, shoot the right B roll, and book the right guests and get it launched early. We’ve been really focused on that and it works.

Of course, there are times when there are a lot of changes between what we think is going to be the show at 11 o’clock and what winds up on the air at 7 o’clock the next morning. There are as many days when it doesn’t change, frankly. I try to leave by about 5:30 or 6 to hopefully spend a little time and have dinner with my family and read Uncle Wiggly.

What’s the biggest story out there at the moment?

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan — especially Iraq. I think it’s dominating the political cycle, it’s dominating the news coverage, it’s dominating discussions whether you’re talking about Capitol Hill, the White House, or the Pentagon. It’s obviously a huge story in terms of the 2008 election.

How is the war going to effect election coverage once things really start heating up?

It’s going to be right there on the forefront for all the candidates to address as the story develops. I’m not sure I can come up with what’s second. It’s that big.

Paris Hilton’s post jail life is at the polar opposite of the spectrum. The uproar over the interview, and Today‘s subsequent decision to pull the reported $1 million offer to do it, drew a lot of criticism. What do you say to those who called it ‘checkbook’ journalism?

The question is flawed: NBC News does not pay for interviews. There was clearly a lot of interest in this interview. There was even considerable coverage of the process of who was getting it, and I’d bet that at least a few of the people wringing their hands over this story tuned in to watch.

Okay, so let’s set the record straight. Did Today ‘get’ Hilton and later decide not to do the interview? If so, why? Was there any financial offer of any kind made to her from NBC for licensing of images or photographs relating to the interview?
Today never had a confirmed interview with Paris Hilton. I know this starts to sound like a broken record, but NBC News does not pay for interviews. Never has. Never will. I know there are those out there who would like to make it more complicated than that, but it’s really just that simple.

Will Today being pursuing an interview with Lindsay Lohan in light of her current troubles?

Of course we would be interested in an interview with Lindsay Lohan. She’s been a guest on Today several times.

You’re launching the fourth hour of Today on September 10 — word is that it’s not going to be a news hour, but more of an infotainment hour. How would you describe it?

I’m not sure how to describe infotainment, but I think it’s best to look at the third hour of Today, which has a healthy mix of segments on topics like relationships to women’s health to home improvement, fashion and fitness. I almost don’t think the ‘tainment’ part is accurate if it’s short for entertainment — you might see more of that at 8:30.

[The fourth hour] is a natural extension of the third hour of the show. [For example,] health is such a huge topic and [there are] so many ways to cover it. The fourth hour is a logical place to see more of that.

When will you be announcing the hosts of the new hour?

I expect that we’ll make the announcement on the fourth hour team in the next few weeks. We didn’t want this to get lost in the middle of the summer and as such, are waiting until we get closer to the launch.

Any hints on who it might be?

I think it’s going to be familiar faces. We feel like what happened in the past with Later Today was it just had the Today name, but it was like, “Who are these people?” I think you’re going to see it in a setting more consistent with the third hour and with people more consistent with the third hour as it currently exists.

The war of words between the morning shows has heated up this year. What’s your take on your competitors these days?

Historically there’s been a healthy rivalry. My position has generally been whether we’re talking about the show or the competition, we’re always better talking about ourselves. Not to dismiss them, but we really compete with ourselves. We went through sweeps undefeated and we didn’t lose a single day. People can talk about the gap one way or another and pick a week here and there, but the bottom line is the Today brand is as healthy, if not healthier, than it’s ever been. We don’t feel there’s much to be gained from the silliness that occasionally rears its head. We’re proud of the show we put on day in and day out. Meredith has been great. Matt is the hottest thing in television news right now.

Why do you say that?

I just think he’s on a great roll with some of these gets. There’s an ease about what he’s doing right now. It’s not forced; he doesn’t struggle. Whether he’s interviewing a politician, a movie star or royalty, he just always has the right tone. He always asks the right questions and it’s never about him. He’s without peer right now.

Let’s talk about his former co-host for a moment. Was Katie’s grand send-off your idea?

It was a collaborative idea. I’m proud of that day and that show and the idea behind it, which was to celebrate what was an incredible fifteen year career and wildly successful run here at Today. It was a no brainer.

Have you spoken to her since she’s moved to CBS?

I have.

Do you speak often?

Not that frequently. We’ve emailed now and again. I think we’re both pretty busy. She’s working away and doing what she can over there. Eventually, I think we’ll connect and break some bread.

Now that it’s been almost a year since Meredith replaced Katie, how would you say the transition period went? Did things go as you expected?

I would say it went about as expected. I really felt that based on what I had seen from her on television over the last twenty years and what my meetings with her had been like, there was no question we had the right person. Fortunately, that put the ball in the producer’s court to come up with good bookings and get her up to speed in terms of the daily grind and the beast that is the show. I think she’s done so brilliantly. I understand — maybe I don’t understand — perhaps because it’s the Today show maybe we don’t quite or Meredith doesn’t quite get the credit she deserves because I think she deserves an enormous amount of credit for what she’s done to be able to seamlessly step into that.

It’s over two years now [since Bell joined the show] and I remember what it was like when I started. It’s a lot. It’s an adjustment to your personal life, to your professional life — you have to be fairly well-versed on an enormous number of topics, you have to be fast, you have to be smart, you have to be funny. Meredith is all those things.

Where do you get your best ideas?

[Laughs.] It’s generally outside the office. I like to go for walks in the woods or on the beach with my family. Something might strike me in the car. It’s usually by accident. It generally doesn’t happen in scheduled meetings. If we schedule a half hour idea meeting, nobody is going to come up with much. [Laughs.] You’re better off saying, “Let’s all go see and movie and go out for a beer afterwards,” and then you might get lucky.

Do you have a motto?

One day at a time, my friend. That’s certainly a good motto to have in this job because it’s an every day job in comparison to the Olympics where you had two years to prepare for two weeks. This is a daily grind. But I think my motto is more “This too shall pass,” because it’s the kind of phrase that keeps your spirits up when times are tough and it keeps you humble when times are going well.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to TVNewser and Fishbowl NY. She writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview has been excerpted for clarity and length.]

Before Brian Williams ascended to the top spot at NBC News, countless stories chronicled his ten-year apprenticeship spent filling in for Tom Brokaw while biding his time with his own broadcasts on MSNBC and CNBC. The truth is, his wait was decades longer. Williams knew he wanted to be a news anchor by the ripe old age of eight and began boning up for the big time by staging imaginary newscasts from his living room in Elmira, New York (He also published a weekly newspaper using his father’s shirt cardboards). “I was blessed to have big, almost arrogant dreams as a kid,” he says. While it’s difficult to imagine television’s most tireless and earnest news anchor doing anything else, Williams’ early life as a college drop out and New Jersey volunteer firefighter hardly foreshadowed the future. But it’s his solid middle class roots that he says gave him the tools to reach for — and land — one of the most competitive jobs in television.

Although not exactly cut from the paternalistic cloth of his predecessors (Williams is more like a smarter older brother with his encyclopedic knowledge of the presidency, NASCAR and pop culture), he readily embraces comparisons made between his broadcast and the traditional mold created in the Cronkite era. “I venerate the giants,” he says soberly. Chances are, though, his idols could never have imagined blogging about what goes on behind the scenes in their newsrooms or broadcasting excerpts from a ‘manifesto’ sent to them by a mass murderer. For Brian Williams, it’s all in a day’s work.

Name: Brian Williams
Position: Anchor and managing editor, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams
Resume: Joined NBC News in 1993; named White House correspondent in 1994. Prior to assuming his current role as anchor of Nightly News in December 2004, helmed MSNBC’s nightly newscast when the network launched in 1996 and later moved the show to CNBC in 2003. Before joining NBC spent seven years at CBS as a correspondent and anchor in Philadelphia and New York; worked at WTTG in Washington, DC. Began his television career at KOAM-TV in Pittsburgh, Kansas. Worked as a college intern during the Carter administration; left college for an administrative position at the National Association of Broadcasters.
Birthdate: May 5, 1959
Hometown: Elmira, New York. “When I was ten I moved to Middletown, New Jersey, so I claim both.”
Education: Never graduated college. “I started out at a community college, I then went to Catholic [University] and then transferred to George Washington [University] before stopping I don’t know how many credits short of a degree to go follow my dream.”
Marital Status: Married to former television news producer Jane Stoddard since 1986, two children.
First section of the Sunday Times: “I go for Week in Review. I usually peruse everything from what the comics are saying to the op-ed page and there’s usually one take-out piece that I like. By that time, though, I’ve usually read the front page. Then, I love obits because often that is some of the only news that surprises me in the paper. If it’s an AP story or a Times bureau story you kind of know a lot of what they’re going to say. I think I’m a pretty typical reader. I’ll scan the Weddings. In my job, I’m lucky enough to get an advance copy of the magazine before I go home on Friday. I usually take a pathetic stab at the puzzle, get about four answers in and convince myself I’m too busy — it couldn’t possibly be that the puzzle is too hard. The last thing I read Sunday night before turning in is the book review section.”
Favorite television show: “In the post-Sopranos era, I would have to say The Office — 30 Rock is a close second. I’ve been a huge SNL fan since its inception. And Friday Night Lights — it is the most creative and most serially underestimated show on television. I love that show. Talk about a realistic portrayal of married life. They get race right, they get high school kids right — I’ve owned two of them, I know; they get marriage right — a strong, long term marriage, I have one of those. I’ve never been a high school football coach but I have been to Texas and I have seen the yard signs in different communities saying, ‘so-so jersey number player lives here.’ I later learned from one of our correspondents that those are real homes [on the show]. They move into town and they shut down the streets and the furnishings you see are the furnishings you find in actual homes. Every part of that show is quality. I’m not a corporate lackey, but when I think of what we watch as a family, they all happen to be NBC shows.”
Last book read: Ike by Michael Korda. “I’m in the middle of it. It’s a doorstop but it’s what I read. I’m thoroughly enjoying it.”

Congrats on making the cover of Men’s Vogue earlier this year. Are you disappointed that Roger Federer edged you out for the honor of being Anna Wintour’s big crush?

I read about that! I’m not the typical reader — I don’t consider myself a clothes horse but I’ve got to say last the issue I picked up of that magazine — I think it was the month after I was in it — I found some really interesting articles in there including one about Phillip Johnson’s glass house. They hire good writers and seem to do good work. All I know about Vogue is I just had to carry the September issue to my wife from our mailbox. I have biographies that weigh less!

So here’s the big burning question we usually start with in these interviews: How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

Oh that’s easy. I realize I started life with some good cards in my deck but I was also missing some others. I had the good fortune to come from a fifty-year marriage and loving household. While my father never made any real money, he was the classic provider. We weren’t allowed any name brand sneakers or jeans and Christmas was often fairly thin, but I don’t remember going in need of something. But then there’s the part of life that didn’t go so well — dropping out of college. I came very close to taking the police exam in my town where I was a fireman. In Middletown, New Jersey, a lot of our fire department, which was all volunteer, was made up of police officers. You end up hanging out together in the same taverns. I came very close to settling down and not having a horizon beyond that town which would have been a fine life. I know because I have friends who have decided it’s a fine life.

In this country exclusively, if you are armed with a dream — even an outlandish one — and you have the drive, there’s really no limit to where you might go. I’d like to think I have a powerful message for students. When I give a graduation speech, I am able to say, “All of you gathered here today have an advantage over me – you have a degree in your hands.” I don’t recommend my path to others, but I do recommend holding tight to people’s dreams, goals and ambitions because this is the one country on the planet where the system is set up in a way to come true.

What are the key elements of your success?

If you’re a bystander in your occupation, if you feel yourself pushed into what you’re doing for a living or if you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, that will weed out the less than the truly serious. You have to have burning desire. I have found having great mentors and great luck is something there’s no substitute for. I am such a reflection of the team around me. I am the luckiest recipient of the best team of journalists ever assembled. I think all of the people who do what I do for a living walk around with a certain steady flow of guilt.

I don’t think everyone in your position feels all that guilty.

Well, we get to put our name on these broadcasts and it is way out of whack because there wouldn’t be Nightly News with Brian Williams without Richard Engel risking his life in the Middle East, without Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory knowing politics and the players as well as they do, without a video tape producer caring enough to find the perfect shot and an assignment editor working all night to get a live truck to the scene of a breaking story and allowing us the luxury to sleep. You get to be the recipient of all their collective efforts and it’s with me every minute of every day.

It’s almost three years since you were named anchor of Nightly News. Has the job been everything that you’d hoped it would be?

And more. I think that the job today is mildly indistinguishable as recently as when Tom [Brokaw] had it. Tom didn’t have the Internet monster to feed. It’s more portable. Fourteen trips to New Orleans since Katrina is something that I am endlessly proud of. We’ve got a New Orleans bureau because I work for a wealthy company — a company that knows where to put its heart and actually did something unusual and said, ‘Okay, great American city, we’re gonna buy a stake in you. This is so important to us that we’re gonna put out a shingle and ask staff members to leave their lives and families in places like Atlanta and come staff this bureau.’ Certain stories have changed the direction of what we do.

We have a radio division we didn’t have before. I write a daily blog. I update it when I’m on the road. We’re shooting mini video taped pieces for the Web, we’re updating the true believer viewers who click on whatever the update is and follow your progress during the day. 2.5 million streams a week — people looking for Nightly News material on the Web. It just didn’t exist [before].

Do you consider your blog something of an alternate universe to your broadcast? You take a much more personal approach and address the viewer in a much different way.

That’s a great point. I’d never dream of using the first person on the air. This broadcast has to be about everything else but me, and yet if you take the time and trouble to read my blog, that tells me that you bring to the blog a certain level of interest about what we do for a living. I’ve used it for one extra-curricular vehicle. I’m a member of exactly one board of directors — the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. So every day for 109 days we post a different biography of the 109 living Medal of Honors recipients. They’ve become a cause in my life. They are all about service, duty, sacrifice and valor. I have this great destination every day that gets to be my little corner of the blogosphere and no one has said to me, ‘Hey, how unfair you calling attention to these medal of honor recipients! Stop that!’ I chose this board membership very carefully because I think it’s an organization and 109 individuals that are above reproach. So yes, it’s a parallel universe. It’s a style and minutiae that doesn’t belong on Nightly News but it also feeds as a viewer’s guide and accompaniment to Nightly News. It feeds those who are looking for a little bit more texture and context.

How much time do you devote to the blog on a daily basis?

You take a day like yesterday when I anchored the Petraeus hearings from 12:30 to 4, got off at 4 and went immediately to the Nightly News. I hadn’t written a word for the broadcast so I never got to post a blog entry for the first time in ages. I can’t remember the last time I haven’t had time to say something. I come back after our editorial meeting when it’s over at 3 o’clock and sit down and write something. Often I’ll have a topic in mind, something will be bothering me or there’s something I want to link to. It’s like having a daily column, but the stakes are lower.

What’s a typical day like for you?

If I’m not here for the 9:30 am conference call, I join by phone and then often walk in before the room is broken up. I love the sensation of walking down the hall toward the glass doors where the meeting is going on and hearing live what’s happening on the other side of that glass, then I hang up and take my seat. We’re here for quite a while afterwards. We know we’ve got to do another broadcast the next day, but we’re never satisfied enough when we talk about what we just finished. We talk about what the competition just aired — that’s important. You put your heart and soul into these broadcasts every day and you know we’re not doing this in a vacuum. We go on the air with two great news divisions across town gunning for us trying to do a lot of the same stories we have to cover because it’s the news of the day. There’s no substitute for competition. That’s why monopolies aren’t good.

Do you still clean your kitchen at night to relax?

I did it last night. You were the first person to “report” that years ago and people still mention it to me. I don’t know what it says about men or our profession that it’s of note that we have a home life, but one of my duties is to run through the kitchen before I turn in for the night. Although last night I must say that I went downstairs to let the dog in and my wife had done a beautiful job. All that was left for me to do was run the dishwasher. Cleaning the kitchen is very satisfying because you wake up to a clean slate and hopefully a clean countertop the next day.

You could not have possibly imagined being called “the dean of the evening news” as the New York Daily News christened you just six months into your tenure because of the unexpected departure of both Rather and Jennings. How did that affect the way things played out for you?

I said at the time and I really meant it, calling me the ‘dean of anchors’ is a lot like saying that The Empire State Building is the tallest building in New York. It’s true, but it’s by default. It didn’t happen organically. It’s a bizarre thing especially knowing how much I venerated these three positions and the three men that had them in the last go-round. Luckily, the daily deadline pressure and slamming these stories together deciding who will make the cut is so much of a preoccupation every day I don’t have a lot of time sit around and think big thoughts about my position.

This year brought more upheaval with Charlie Gibson assuming the top spot at ABC and, of course, Katie’s arrival at CBS. The big lesson here seems to be regular evening news viewers aren’t big on change.

That’s true. In a way, this is the biggest audience of habit left in television. Our viewers are profoundly faithful and very loyal. They are so brand conscious and thank God they are. I always say about the ratings I don’t know what we could put in [the broadcast], how we could tinker with the formula if our goal was to suddenly up the ratings. It’s kind of like you hope the best broadcast wins and we believe we put on the best of the bunch.

What do you make of the treatment your former NBC colleague has gotten in the press?

I wish everyone would take a deep breath. I wish everyone would judge Katie the way I’d like to be judged and that is on the quality of the journalism every night on the CBS Evening News. The rest of it is for journalists not worthy of the title. Katie is a colleague and a friend and as such, I’m a defender. She’s doesn’t need me to speak for her on her behalf but I want to say to everyone who has uttered a harsh word, let’s keep our eyes on the ball.

Speaking of change, you have a new producer, and Nightly News is going to unveil a new set next month.

This is an exciting time. Alex [Wallace, Nightly‘s executive producer] is fantastic. There’s a big reason behind [the new set]. This building is becoming the global headquarters of the network. We’re bringing in everybody from MSNBC so all of us — Channel 4, Telemundo, the division that puts out of our newsfeed — News Channels are going to be under one roof. MSNBC is going to be next to Nightly News in the newsroom which, to quote John F. Kennedy, a rising tide lifts all boats. This is going to be fantastic. They are populated with some really aggressive young talent. To combine these families — I think they should have been combined all along — necessitated the blowing up of walls and breaking down of barriers both literal and figurative. This whole redesign meant we had to have a new set and no one here objected to that. Over my shoulder in certain shots you’re going to see the entire gathered collective family of NBC.

Anything changing content-wise?

No. We’re not going to let form drive function. Beyond a new set of graphics and the shot over my shoulder that will look different, Alex and I are so respectful and mindful of the fact that these audiences are used to a certain look and feel. Nothing is broken, so we don’t want to go fixing things that don’t need it.

It was interesting to see you interviewing James Gandolfini on Nightly not to long ago. Whose idea was it to interview him and promote a show on another network?

Mine. Everybody has their thing and I have a strong military bent. It just so happens this was his first post-Sopranos interview – and by the way there wasn’t a Sopranos word mentioned. He wouldn’t have it and it seemed wrong anyway. (His HBO special, Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq ) was a powerful hour of television. I think the cause and his passion superseded the difference in networks. Not a soul raised a syllable about, ‘What are we doing promoting an HBO show?’ That’s one of the great things about working here – people know a great story when they see one. I know it can be petty business, but I didn’t hear that kind of thing. I didn’t give it a second thought it was a venture of a competitor — I looked at it as a cause.

This interview is taking place on the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. What did that event do to change the news business?

I think 9/11 knocked a bunch of us off our axis. I am still affected by every trip I make downtown. I almost try not to look across town on certain side streets because of the yawning gap I know is there. Six years out, I don’t think we’re yet in a position to calculate the cumulative effect on our psyche. That’s why I love history and historians — they get to be smarter than us and they take their time at it.

You mentioned earlier you’ve been in New Orleans quite a bit. Traveling seems to have become an increasingly important part of the anchor job, particularly in covering stories like Katrina and Virginia Tech. What’s the deciding factor for you that your presence is needed at the site of a story?

There are some where there is no decision. With Virginia Tech, as soon as we got an indication that the death toll was going above a certain number, there was zero discussion about ‘Should you go?’ It just switched to, ‘How do we get there?’ You know ’em when you see ’em, you just know.

Were you surprised to find yourself being cast as the network’s defender — on Oprah no less — for having aired portions of the shooter’s ‘manifesto?’

To her credit, I still don’t know how she felt about it because she worked in television news for a long time. I approached the altar of Oprah with the profound amount of respect for her role in our society, which is undeniable, and she gave me a very decent airing. I just felt the need to explain our actions. I think some people had forgotten the role of a journalist in society. It was a matter of taste in what we released, but the notion of not reporting this was antithetical to us.

That same month, NBC found itself at the center of another story — Imus’ firing — which you announced at the top of a broadcast and wrote about on your blog. Would you go back on his show if and when he returns to the airwaves? Have you been in touch with him?

I’ll take that if it comes up and consider it at the time. I think we exchanged an email since his departure. I think we’ll wait and see.

What Internet sites do you regularly check out?

MSNBC, Drudge Report and the New York Times.

Do you still answer all — or most — your viewer emails?

Yes.

What do you consider your greatest success?

My family and achieving my wildest dreams professionally.

What’s been your biggest disappointment?

Not working harder to enjoy the trappings of my life.

I know you’re a NASCAR junkie. What’s your dream ride?

I have a very fast Mustang GT that sometimes comes very close to a dream ride.

What’s your fastest ever mph?

181 miles per hour at Talladega Superspeedway.

Where does your need for speed come from?

From taking apart engines and attending Friday night stock car races as a kid.

Do you have a motto?

Life’s too short.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and TVNewser. She writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.

It seems only fitting that Jeffrey Toobin would once again find himself on the bestseller list at the same time that O.J. Simpson has returned to haunt the cable news channels. It’s been 13 years since Toobin, who had recently left the U.S. Attorney’s office to join The New Yorker, penned “An Incendiary Defense” for the magazine which broke the story that Simpson’s defense team was “floating” the theory that LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman was part of a police conspiracy to frame the former NFL great for the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. The 4,700-word piece caused an immediate furor and virtually overnight, Toobin became one of the best known attorneys-turned-talking heads to emerge from the chattering classes that chronicled the trial.

Since then Toobin, who still writes for the New Yorker and is now a legal analyst for CNN, has covered the crowded docket of celebrity trials including those of Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, and most recently Phil Spector, as well as the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Supreme Court’s decision on Bush v. Gore. He told The Harvard Crimson earlier this year: “One of the things that I’ve always liked is the mix of high and low.”

In his latest book, The Nine, Toobin went behind the pomp and circumstance of the red velvet curtain and black robes to demystify the Supreme Court — due in large part to exclusive interviews with the justices — and, in doing so, has created a page turner that, at times, reads like a novel. The book, which debuted at No. 5 on The New York Times‘ nonfiction list last week, currently holds the No. 2 spot. With O.J. in his rear-view mirror (although with the possibility of another Simpson trial it’s likely Toobin will revisit the never-ending saga once more), the multi-hyphenate is happy to testify on what it’s taken to finally emerge from the media scrum with a book that’s not a ready made cable news story.

Name: Jeffrey Toobin
Position: Author, CNN legal analyst; staff writer at The New Yorker
Resume: Author of The Nine (Doubleday) and A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President; The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson; and Too Close To Call: The 36-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election. (All published by Random House). Joined CNN in April 2002 after seven years as a legal analyst with ABC News. Staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993. Previously served as assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn; served as an associate counsel in The Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, which served as the basis of his first book, Opening Arguments: A Young Lawyer’s First Case — United States v. Oliver North.
Birthdate: May 21, 1960
Hometown: New York, New York
Education: Harvard College ’82, Harvard Law School ’86
Marital status: Married to Amy McIntosh, chief talent officer at The New York City Department of Education; two children: Ellen, a high school junior, and Adam, a freshman.
First section of the Times: “Every day I walk [the family dog] Thunder Toobin and I take the sports with me as I walk around my block, so I guess I’d have to say the sports.”
Favorite television show: The Sopranos
Guilty pleasure: “Playing golf. It’s a very compelling activity and it’s very hard to do well.”
Last book read: “The Argument by Matt Bai and See You in Court by Thomas Geoghegan. I read those two more or less simultaneously.”

How’s the book tour going?

Great. I’m getting these enormous audiences at my appearances and as much as I’d like to think it’s about me and my book, I think there is just this huge thirst for knowledge about the court. There is a recognition that the court is in a critical moment in its history. People are hungry for information about it, so I think my timing is really good.

What made you want to write this book? When did you decide to do it?

It’s sort of a funny story. Three summers ago, in 2004, I had the wonderful idea of writing a legal thriller and my agent, Esther Newberg, said, “Oh, that’s great. It’s a terrific idea. [Editor] Phyllis Grann has always been interested in you and wants to read your novel.” So I spent the summer writing three chapters and showed it to Phyllis. She invited me to her apartment and said, “This novel is terrible. You should not pursue this. This is going to be a very bad novel if you finish it.” Then she said, “What you should do instead is write a book about the Supreme Court.” It was like a light bulb went off in my head because I’ve been covering the court off and on for almost 15 years. I loved The Brethren, but it was published in 1979. There seemed like there was a tremendous need for a book on this subject and I also knew it was likely that one or more justices would leave in the next couple of years — and this was of course before Rehnquist and O’Connor left. I knew it would be an issue in the 2008 [presidential] campaign, so all the stars quickly aligned. I more or less immediately agreed to do it but, I owe the success of The Nine to my ineptitude as a novelist.

When did you start writing? How long did it take to do?

I took a leave from The New Yorker of about seven months — I also worked on it while I was there — but there was a seven-month intense period. The dates are a little fuzzy to me. I worked on the book over three years.

How much time did you spend reporting?

It was much of the three years. A lot of the reporting was at the same time I was writing. It’s not neatly divided.

How does one go about getting Supreme Court justices to talk?

I had done profiles of three of them already. I had written long New Yorker pieces about Thomas, Kennedy, and Breyer. I was not an unknown quantity to them. There were also clerks who are a lot more hit or miss. It took a thick skin. Some clerks would tell me to go to hell promptly or not return my phone calls, but many were cooperative. It was just a question of pounding your head against the wall with the justices and the clerks.

Were there specific challenges endemic to this book since the critical interviews were all not for attribution?

It was pretty clear from day one what the terms of the deal were going to be — all interviews were on background. I could use the material, but I couldn’t identify the source. People were relatively comfortable with that. Once people agreed to talk, the conditions were pretty obvious. I was able to cross reference a lot of the more controversial stuff. I was usually able to get multiple sources.

The Nine is such an in-depth examination of the personalities of the justices. I would think you would have naturally wanted to attribute much of what was said to the person to give it even more context.

I just knew that wasn’t going to be the case.

But did it make writing the book more difficult?

Not really. Magazine writing is different from book writing. In the practice of magazine writing attribution is mandatory, particularly at The New Yorker. Whereas a book is more of a seamless narrative without that sort of attribution. I had done that with my previous books as well when I was writing about the recount or writing about Monica or O.J.

Can you tell me which justices required the greatest amount of finessing?

My deal with them was I would not disclose either the number or the identity of the justices who spoke to me. All I can say is that it was better than I expected.

What was the biggest surprise once you got into the meat of the project?

The extraordinary drama of Sandra Day O’Connor’s life was the biggest surprise. Here you have this woman when she graduates near the top of her class at Stamford the best job she’s offered is as a legal secretary. That’s the world into which she arrived. Flash forward to a tenure at the United States Supreme Court where she dominated the court on all the most contentious issues. She provides the decisive vote to put George Bush in office in Bush v. Gore, then becomes totally alienated from him over the war or terror, the war in Iraq, and the Terri Schiavo case and doesn’t want to give up her seat to him, but because of her husband’s illness feels like she must. As the crowning irony by the time she actually leaves the court, her husband has disappeared into Alzheimer’s disease. She winds up losing both her beloved seat on the court and her beloved husband almost at the same time.

She emerges from your book as being not only the most influential justice but seemingly from your perspective the most intriguing.

It’s not just that she was the first woman — although that is very significant — she was just enormously influential. Her legacy is a chord that hued very closely to what the majority of the American people believed on any given issue. She had a politician’s instinct for being a judge. But I think her legacy is in extreme and immediate jeopardy right now and I think she knows it. This is a very much more conservative court and looking ahead the three justices likely to leave in the next presidential term are Stevens, Souter, and Ginsberg are all on the liberal side. If they’re replaced by a republican president, her legacy disappears practically overnight.

How did Clarence Thomas writing his own book impact your access to him?

[His book, My Grandfather’s Son] was kind of a mystery for a long time. HarperCollins was very secretive about it because it was very late. The book contract has been announced quite a few years ago and it took him a very long time to deliver. Then they didn’t announce publication until shortly before it was out. Frankly, it’s great that it’s out the same time as mine. It just means more attention to the court. He such a polarizing, fascinating figure — it’s always good to be able to talk about him.

Your timing was great on that one.

It was total dumb luck.

Is the secrecy surrounding the court what makes it compelling to a wide book audience?

It’s the combination of the enormous secrecy, the huge stakes of what they decide, and the compelling idiosyncrasies of the people involved. Once you chip away at the secrecy, you learn that these are very interesting people. David Souter is a huge catalog of idiosyncrasies. The nuclear weapons program is secret, but nobody is particularly interested in it. What makes it interesting is the secrecy plus the stakes involved and the characters.

Have you gotten any feedback from the court on the book?

Not yet. Frankly, I’m sort of relieved. David Remnick once told me after he writes a story his preference is not to hear anything one way or another. I think I’ve sort of adopted that approach. You kind of feel bad either way. If they hate it, you feel like you were unfair; if they love it, you feel like you were too soft. No news is good news.

Any interest in developing the book for a movie? There are lots of meaty roles there.

HBO is doing two of my books for movies. They’re doing Recount and that starts filming this month. The lead is Kevin Spacey with Laura Dern and Denis Leary. Jay Roach, the Austin Powers guy is directing it. It’s a great script which I did not write. A Vast Conspiracy, the Monica story, is also in development at HBO. With [The Nine], I’m certainly open to offers.

From one end of the spectrum to the other, we last spoke at Michael’s the day Denise Brown went on The Today Show to implore the publisher of the Goldman’s version of the O.J. book, If I Did It, not to publish it. At the time, when I asked you what you thought the public’s reaction would be to the book, you said it would be “a disgusted sigh.” Are you surprised it’s become a best seller?

The book is selling better than I expected. I figured it would make the bestseller list briefly, but it seems like there’s more interest in the book than I expected.

Simpson certainly helped things by getting arrested in Vegas.

I guess that’s right. Wasn’t it the day after it was released he was arrested? That’s sort of a cosmic complement. It sort of is like old home week. The O.J. repertoire company has reconvened.

Have you read the book?

I don’t have a copy yet, but out of professional obligation I should get one.

If you had to write the epic end to the O.J. saga what would it be?

My reaction so far is if O.J. Part One is tragedy, O.J. Part Two is farce. As best I can tell, every single person in that goofy hotel room in Las Vegas was some kind of shady character and who’s exactly the thief and who’s exactly the victim will be difficult to sort out. The first trial was about the horrible murder of two people; the second trial is basically about some worthless merchandise so the stakes are wildly different.

But for those who are obsessed with O.J., this is a second chance to immerse themselves in every detail.

As with the first case, I think the public is more interested than it admits. If this case really proceeds and there’s a trial, there will be a tremendous amount of interest.

By and large, with few exceptions, no one really seemed to care about the Phil Spector trial.

That case made no impression, did it? He’s old and his accomplishments are old. But the public cared about Scott Peterson and no one had ever heard of him. That is kind of a puzzle.

You’ve been covering these sensational trials-turned-train wrecks for a while. What makes one capture the public’s attention while another doesn’t register on the radar?

It takes a certain combination of events. One of the reasons why there’s not interest in some cases is they’re not televised. But Spector was televised. Yet still no one was particularly interested. I think it just dragged on for so long. I don’t know — there was something about him that people were not interested in.

What are they putting in the water coolers in Los Angeles courtrooms that prevent juries from convicting anyone with a modicum of celebrity?

It is interesting — with each individual case you can muster an explanation. I did follow the Spector case somewhat — I only did it when CNN forced me to do it and that wasn’t very often — and the suicide theory, which I initially thought was completely absurd, did have some evidence behind it. I thought it was absurd when I first heard it, but it was not as crazy as I thought.

What do you consider your greatest success?

The success of The Nine. My other book piggybacked on events where there was already enormous interest. With The Nine, I had to create a narrative out of an institution rather than an event. I think that made it a more difficult writing assignment. I think the book is my best book. It was the hardest book to report and write. O.J. was huge, Monica was huge — even the recount was big. This was more sort of my creation.

What’s been your biggest disappointment?

I don’t want to sound like a whiner. I’ve written five books — two of them came out in the middle of huge news events which really swamped them. My first book, Opening Arguments, about my experience as a prosecutor in the Oliver North case came out just as the Gulf War happened in 1991. Too Close to Call, about the recount in Florida was published in October 2001 right after 9/11. It’s weird — my O.J. book happened to be published exactly when the O.J. civil case started. It was just fantastic timing. This book has had fantastic timing. I’ve also had two books with terrible timing. It’s all dumb luck — some good, some bad.

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

It’s funny. It’s very circuitous. I had two journalist parents — my mother is Marlene Sanders, who is one of the pioneering women television correspondents, and my dad, Jerome Toobin, was one of the founding fathers of public television and Bill Moyer’s producers for many years. So I grew up in this television household and thus, was repeatedly instructed never to consider a career in television. So I went to law school thinking I’d be a lawyer but I always worked on the school paper and I started freelancing when I was in law school. It’s a question of my genetic destiny kicking in and that fact that Tina Brown took a chance on hiring me out of the US Attorney’s office were really key factors.

These days there are people going to law school because they want careers on television.

I hear from people like that and it’s surprising to me. When the O.J. case happened in 1994, there was no such thing as a television legal analyst. The job didn’t exist — that’s just 13 years ago. The advice I always give to would be law students is: don’t go to law school if you want it as vehicle to something else because the sad truth is most law school graduates become lawyers. If you want to be a journalist, be a journalist. Don’t go to law school to be a journalist. Obviously, my career refutes that to certain extent but it’s very much the exception rather than the rule.

Do you have a motto?

The writing motto I have is ‘Show, don’t tell.’ It’s the best writing advice I ever got. It’s the writing advice I always give.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and TVNewser. She writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.

As the sole surviving original co-host (except for boss and mother hen Barbara Walters) of ABC’s chatfest The View, Joy Behar has handled more than her share of ‘hot topics.’ While Star, Rosie, and Elizabeth made headlines with their feuds and shoot from the lip, take-no-prisoners style, Behar has remained happily — and smartly — above the fray. The former school teacher-turned-standup comedian knows a good gig when she sees one, but she hasn’t given up her first love — standup comedy. (“It’s what I do.”) Her route from answering phones at Good Morning America to a seat at the table alongside Barbara and the guests at “the cocktail party du jour” was a circuitous one. Behar survived her share of personal and professional meltdowns before finding her footing on stage doing standup and moonlighting on one of daytime’s most enduring and compulsively watchable shows. These days, she spends her mornings at ABC and many of her evenings on stage (this month she’s headlining a benefit every Tuesday night for God’s Love We Deliver at the Zipper Theatre). Over a post-show lunch of Jenny Craig pizza, Behar served up some tasty dish about what it’s taken to outlast her former co-hosts over the past decade and why she’ll never give up her night job.

Name: Joy Behar
Position: Co-host of The View
Resume: Joined The View in 1997 as part of the daytime chat fest’s original team of cohorts after Barbara Walters saw her perform at Milton Berle’s 89th birthday party. (“She was impressed even though she’d never heard of me.”) Prior to joining the show, Behar was performing standup comedy at legendary clubs including Caroline’s and Catch A Rising Star in New York City. Before breaking into the business, the comedian had various stints that included teaching grade school English and answering phones at Good Morning America. She is the author of several books including the best sellers Joy Shtick or What is the Existential Vacuum and Does it Come with Attachments? and the children’s book Sheetzucacapoopoo: My Kind of Dog. Her latest, When You Need A Lift (Crown) was published last month.
Birthdate: October 7 (“That’s it”)
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Education: Queens College BA in English, State University of New York/Stony Brook MA in English education.
Marital status: “I’ve been with Steve [Janowitz] for 25 years.” One daughter, Eve, from first marriage.
First section of the Sunday Times: “I read the front page. I just sort of scan it. Then I go to the Op-Ed page, the editorials, and the letters. Then I go to the arts section.
Favorite television show: “It sounds too elitist when I answer this but I basically watch The Situation Room on CNN. I Tivo it. I watch it every day. I like the format. I like everything about it. It never disappoints me.”
Guilty pleasure: “Massage, manicure, pedicure. The whole bit.”

You are the only original member of The View — besides Barbara Walters — still standing. What’s the secret to your longevity?

I recognize that it’s just television. It’s a show, it’s not personal. I’ve said this before — I feel as though I’m at a revolving cocktail party and I basically stay the same and different people move around me. That’s my attitude. Plus, I have my real life. I have a very strong real life. I have a lot of friends and I think that’s why. I’m not sure that other people couldn’t say the same thing, but they’re not here. [Laughs]

The show has evolved in its 10 years. It’s changed a lot in terms of tone — it’s certainly become a lot more controversial. How do you think you’ve evolved?

I think I’m calmer about it. I don’t like the cross-talk and now I open my mouth about it — “One at a time.” I’ve become more bossy. [Laughs] I’ve also become more political over the years — which I’ve always been. In the sixties and seventies I marched against the Vietnam War. My ex-husband and I were always very concerned about the country and the way it was going, so it’s a natural thing for me. Since it’s election year coming up, I’m going to be there.

Have you decided who you’re endorsing?

Not yet. I like Hillary but I’m afraid of her hawkiskness, to tell you the truth. In that regard, I like Ron Paul better. Even though he’s a staunch conservative. He’s against Roe v. Wade, I think. I’m not even sure about that. He’s a libertarian so how can he be against that? He could personally be against abortion but that doesn’t mean he’d want to change the law. He’s the only one who speaks the truth from that party. With the other party, they’re all playing around right now and I don’t know who to believe.

Let’s go back to the politics of The View. During that now infamous final dust up between Rosie and Elizabeth you said on-air, “Who’s directing this show?” and were clearly annoyed about what was going on. Did you say anything to the powers that be afterwards?

I was in a minimal position at that point. It was so crazy that day that they didn’t even pay attention to me, which is fine. [Laughs] I was a minor player. I was, in the moment, saying, “How come this is going on for so long?” It was so acrimonious. When I’ve seen it, it was not pretty. I never watch the show after I do it because I’m there already. I happened to catch [that show] a couple of times and I just thought it was nasty business.

Were you ever concerned that all the negative publicity surrounding the show was overshadowing it?

Yeah. Sometimes I did think that.

Did you talk to Barbara or [executive producer] Bill Geddie about that?

No. It doesn’t work like that around here.

So what did you think?

[The controversy] became the show and the ratings were up. You can’t argue with success. It was like the cocktail party du jour and it just went. That was the way it was. When [Rosie] left, now it’s this party. We’re having a different kind of thing. I think this is calmer. This is as much fun as last year. It’s just a different kind of fun.

What’s the vibe on the set now with Whoopi and Sherri?

It’s a much calmer vibe. It’s not as dangerous, I guess. But to me, it’s exciting anyway because Whoopi is a very bright girl. She’s got good politics and both of us are interested in trying to get people to listen to the things we say about what we read and see.

Did you read Rosie’s book?

I haven’t read it. I went to her art show yesterday. She has all these wacky paintings that she’s done that are very interesting. She’s a talented girl. She’s very smart. All I know are these little dribs and drabs from the press. I haven’t gotten around to it. I’ve been trying to avoid it so I don’t have to comment on it. But, I can comment on what I know about it.

It’s been widely reported that in it she says Barbara is ‘tired’ and says something about it being time for her to retire. Were you surprised by that?

I was surprised. Mike Wallace is 89 and he’s not retiring. People should retire when they want to retire. She’s entitled to say whatever she wants — it’s a free country — but I don’t happen to agree with it.

What was it like having Meredith come back for a visit last week? I know you’re good friends.

We really are good friends. It was nice to see her again.

How do you think she’s done at Today?

She’s doing so well. When she went over there I said to them, “You’ll never have any diva moments with this girl.” She doesn’t act out. She’s not crazy. She doesn’t act like a big star. She’s very self-effacing and generous. I miss her.

So let’s talk about your new book When You Need a Lift. Where did the idea come from?

They [Crown] came to me with the idea of people sharing their stories about how they get out of a bad mood since I’m a comedian and my whole raison d’etre is to make people laugh. That’s where the idea came from. I sent a letter out to a lot of people — some people responded and some didn’t. The ones who responded that we liked we put in the book.

Most people don’t know a lot about you prior to you joining The View. You started your television career as a receptionist at Good Morning America. What were your goals at the time?

I had tried a lot of different things. I was an employment counselor. I worked at a mental hospital. I taught English to different grades in different places. I had done a lot of those kinds of jobs. I was qualified to teach English in a high school but I saw that wasn’t working for me. You always have in the back of your mind the thing you wanted to do when you were 10 years old. I was a funny kid. I wanted to be an actress of some sort. Standup comedy was always in the back of my mind because I was funny at parties — and I thought, “I could do this.” But it was extremely daunting. So I went into television because the lighting director [at Good Morning America] was a family member and got me this gig as a receptionist. I was thinking “I guess I’ll be a producer or something.” I wasn’t cut out to be a producer, either. I did get a promotion at one point to be a producer at Good Morning America and then I said, “I don’t want this job. I want to be a receptionist again.” [Laughs] Then I went back to being a receptionist and I got fired because it was clear it really was not happening. I was a receptionist with a master’s degree, so I was a little bitter.

After I was fired, I had also had a near death experience — an ectopic pregnancy, which really went awry during that period. I also got divorced. I was really on the edge. All of this happened in three years [1979-1981]. I was really like, “What am I going to do now?” After I got over the shock of why my life was in such shambles, I started to get on stage. I started to work in [standup comedy] and I was on stage constantly.

Where was your first show? What was that like?

I started down in the Village at a place called Comedy U. because on Thursday nights they had a female night. I started to bond with the other women comedians and we were trying to support each other. The audiences were different from the uptown male audiences. It was a little bit easier to break in. From there, I started to get better and better until I was able to get into Catch a Rising Star.

It sounds as if even with your gig on The View you still consider stand up your primary “job.”

Jay Leno told me he makes a lot of money from The Tonight Show but he doesn’t spend any of it. He puts it all in the bank. The only thing he spends is his stand up money because he knows he’ll always be able to work as a comedian and that’s the money that he lives on. Stand up comics always have that. We always have that in the back of our minds and in our back pockets. It’s what we really do.

Has the experience of doing standup changed for you since you’ve become so well known from The View?

More people know me so they come to party with a kind of savviness about me. They know, for example, they’re not going to hear me say wonderful things about President Bush. They’re also interested in me as a person, so it’s much easier when you’re at that point in your career rather than having to win them over.

So what does the future hold for you at The View? How long are you planning on staying there?

I don’t know. I never know. I always think, “We won’t last much longer” — and then we’re on for 10 years. I have two more years on this contract and we’ll see what happens.

What’s your dream job?

This one. [Laughs]

What’s your average day like on The View?

I wake up in the morning and I read the paper. That’s the first thing that I do. I read The New York Times every day and I read The Week on Friday. It’s very important to read. And I read The Nation. Those keep me informed.

What about Web sites?

I’m going to start doing more. I’m trying to read Huffington Post a little more. My main preparation is watching The Situation Room and reading the papers. And, of course, there’s pop culture to deal with. We get research in the morning. I try to follow Britney and all the rest of them and try to have my own take on the situation. That’s basically it.

What do you consider your greatest success?

Besides my daughter? My daughter has turned out to be very strong. Everyone loves her. She’s a divine person. She’s very solid and has real values. She’s not a phony. She’s doesn’t go with the crowd. She has a mind of her own. She’s it as far as my accomplishments are concerned.

What would you say has been your biggest disappointment?

[Pauses]. Oh God…I’m not really disappointed by too much.

Looking back, how would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

Desperation. [Laughs] And an innate ability to do what I do. They say the definition of talent is something that comes easy to you. Yakking comes easy to me. [Laughs] No one in my family ever told me to shut up.

Do you have a motto?

My mother used to say, “Don’t spit up in the air, it comes back in your face.” My father used to say, “People who live in glass houses should dress in the cellar.” I try to live by those mottos.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and TVNewser. She writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.

Backstabbing and bitchiness are the stock and trade of the characters that populate fashionista favorites Project Runway and Ugly Betty, but to hear Fern Mallis tell it, real life doesn’t imitate television. When reality show producers declared her “too nice” for her own series last year, IMG’s senior vice president of fashion saw it as more of a validation than a rejection. “In the conversations it just became obvious I just wasn’t bitchy enough, which I thought was an okay thing,” she says.

In her decades long career in fashion, Mallis has become one of its most tireless and visible champions. In 1993, as the executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, she organized the industry’s first “Fashion Week” — then called 7th on Sixth — and took on the unenviable task of getting notoriously prickly designers to play nice and produce their runway shows in one central location. Today, she presides over Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in New York twice a year when the industry’s biggest names pitch their tents in Bryant Park with her characteristic good-natured calm while making sure the hissy fits are kept to a minimum and Jessica, Demi, and Beyoncé get to their front row seats without too much hassle from the paparazzi. Mallis has also proven there’s plenty of substance behind all that style. According to industry sources, the event generates over $235 million for the city each season. Perhaps that’s why Mallis is logging plenty of frequent flyer miles traveling as far as India to help foreign fashionistas stage their own headline-grabbing shows.

For the Brooklyn-born girl who graduated from James Madison High School having won both the “fashion design” award and kudos from her classmates as “best dressed,” it’s a dream come true. “I still get goose bumps when the lights go down, the music starts and those first shows start,” says Mallis. “It’s thrilling.”

Name: Fern Mallis
Position: Senior vice president, IMG Fashion
Resume: Before assuming her current position when IMG acquired 7th on Sixth in 2001, served as executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America for 10 years; served as a consultant for the fashion and interior design industries and worked as vice president of marketing and communications for the International Design Center, New York (IDCNY); principal of Fern Mallis Public Relations; began her career in fashion after winning Mademoiselle‘s “Guest editor” competition; spent several years as a merchandising editor for the magazine
Birthdate: March 26
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Education: University of Buffalo, BFA
Marital status: Single
First section of The Sunday Times: “I have to admit I read the Style section first.”
Favorite television show: “I watch Project Runway and I’ve been watching Cashmere Mafia. I think it’s amusing. It will be interesting to see how Lipstick Jungle shapes up. I love Boston Legal. I was a Grey’s Anatomy fan — a little less so now. Most of this is on DVR and watched at one o’clock in the morning. I tape Oprah. I check what the subject matter is and if it’s interesting, I watch it later when I’m up at night and can’t sleep.”
Guilty pleasure: “Eating”
Last book read: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

How did Fashion Week in its current incarnation come about?

The short version is it was an accident. There was a ceiling crash in 1991 at Michael Kors in a loft downtown in the kind of raw, rough space designers love to do fashion shows in. Once the music started playing, pieces of the ceiling plaster started to fall down on the runway hitting the shoulders of the super models — Linda, Naomi, Cindy. They just kind of brushed off their shoulders and kept walking but then plaster landed in Suzy Menkes’ and Carrie Donovan’s lap. They didn’t take kindly to that. The next day’s headlines pretty much read ,”We live for fashion; we don’t want to die for it.” It took the American fashion industry to task for all the unsafe spaces designers would show in. I had just been hired and hadn’t started yet as executive director of the CFDA. At that moment I said, “I think my job description just changed.” If there were 50 shows, there were 50 locations and very few people spoke to each other about you being uptown and I’m downtown. The mantra was “Organize, centralize, modernize” the runway shows.

The first shows were organized in 1993 at the Tents in Bryant Park. In 1992, we were asked by CFDA to come up with an idea for the Democratic National Convention. We got a group together and put on a fashion show. We put up this big tent in Central Park for 1200 delegates and guests. Every single designer was there — Calvin, Donna, Oscar, Diane, Isaac, and Tom. Everybody you could possibly think of participated. At the end they all walked down the runway with their models. They all looked at me like, “So this is what you’re talking about?” It was the reality of seeing it that really cemented the concept. I went to Paris and Milan the following season to see everything and came back with a full report. The next season, we made our deal with Bryant Park. It just kept growing and has just evolved into this massive company. Nobody ever thought 10 designers would ever work together in the same place. Then we began registering media from around the world. We now have 4,000 registered outlets that come to cover fashion week.

Any idea how many shows you’ve been to since taking this job?

Thousands.

For you, prepping for Fashion Week must be like getting ready to run a marathon. What do you do to prepare?

There’s no time. I just came back from India. I was there for some licensing meetings and some meetings for Fashion Week. Since IMG bought 7th on Sixth in 2001, we’ve expanded. Now we have Mercedes Benz Fashion Week twice a year in New York, twice a year in Los Angeles, once a year in Miami, twice a year in Berlin. We’ve also purchased a company in Australia so we have Rosemont Fashion Week in Sydney. We do Kuala Lumpur. We consult in Mexico City. We represent Milan Fashion Week for commercial sales. We do Fashion Fringe events in London. We just signed Istanbul Fashion Week. We’re also involved with Fashion Week in Moscow.

Is that the major difference in your job — its international scope — since Seventh on Sixth was acquired by IGM?

It’s certainly much more global. Before that CFDA was doing Fashion Week plus the awards galas, the membership and scholarship programs and Fashion Targets Breast Cancer. When we got here, we saw the opportunity and the interest in Fashion Week expanding around the world. The company is a much more synergistic company with media opportunities, licensing, and all the different divisions that IMG brings to the table that we’re able to leverage for the fashion industry.

Fashion Week can certainly be credited with making fashion a much bigger part of the pop culture landscape. What has that meant in the big picture sense for the industry?

It’s meant better business for them. The convergence of fashion and celebrity over the last 10 years has just been phenomenal. I credit Joan Rivers with a lot of that. She was the first person who covered the red carpet and asked people what they were wearing. Before that you had to guess. That was not the primary conversation — nobody would dare ask, “Are those your diamonds? Whose shoes are those?” She changed that dialogue forever. I think that has put fashion squarely at the center of pop culture. You can’t look at a red carpet event without having 20 or 30 designers names associated with it and that’s been great for the industry.

This year’s Oscars — if it comes off — will have a pretty high glamour quotient. What would it mean to the fashion industry if there’s no red carpet this year?

It would be a disaster. That, coupled with today’s stock market news is just going to contribute to the downward spiral I’d rather not think about. We all need this Oscar. I hope that sanity and common sense prevail and people are able to negotiate their way forward.

I once got trampled by a photographer – he literally held me down on the ground under his boot — when Beyoncé showed up at an Oscar de la Renta show. The melee made the papers because Suzy Menkes, who always seems to be in harm’s way, got caught in the fray. The presence of celebrities at shows seems to be a double-edged sword. What’s your take on having them at the shows?

It is a double-edged sword in some respects, but the majority of the celebrities who show up are bonafide clients and friends of the designers. They depend on each other a great deal. That dress will get that celebrity in the media and it’s that coverage in one of 15 celebrity-driven magazines or Web sites that gets that designer’s name out there. That is money in the bank for them. The celebrities add a marvelous element to the shows when kept in context and in proportion. We try very hard with our security and our public relations staff to manage that as best as possible. There are always a few overeager photographers. Over the years we have really worked to create several levels of credentials. There’s that tap dance that goes on for twenty minutes while people are getting to their seats — people go up and down the front row and shoot and get their interviews because the story and the news of Fashion Weeks is not just the collections. It’s the whole environment in the tents.

When celebrities are there, sometimes the press is favorable and sometimes it’s not. If there are too many celebrities, the press will say, “This is ridiculous.” The next season, there’s no celebrities and you get beat up the shows are lackluster because there’s no stars. It’s an absolutely a no-win situation.

Which celebrities have caused the greatest uproar by their presence at a show?

Several years ago when we were doing separate men’s show I’d say Pamela Anderson caused a stir the likes of which were shocking. Beyoncé gets a crowd. Last season we had Clive Owen, Demi Moore, and Lucy Liu at Miss Sixty.

There were a lot of rumors flying around that the company paid all those stars to sit in that front row. What do you think of that practice? Are you aware of that happening a lot?

I know it’s been much more prevalent in Europe where they fly people in, put them up, and give them clothes. For the most part, with the designer brands who work in New York and show in the tents, I’m not aware of them hardly ever paying anyone to be there. There are some names and brands that are new on the schedule and if they’ve got some money to do it and celebrities show up and get them press coverage, it’s probably an investment that was worthwhile. I don’t think it’s for me to condone or criticize how people spend their money. I’m sure there are a lot of young designers who could afford to do that.

Celebrities have long replaced models on the covers of fashion magazines. Do you see that practice continuing?

I think it kind of goes in and out of favor every so often. Models are the mainstay of our industry and are really the people who sell a dress and a look.

On the runway that’s certainly true, but on magazine covers it seems like celebrities rule. Someone once said to me now if you see a magazine cover with a face on it you don’t recognize it seems rather jarring.

I think that’s too bad. I wish there were more models on the covers of magazines again.

Maybe this is too strong a word, but do you think there is any resentment on the part of designers for having to play the celebrity game? There’s really no way around it these days, is there?

Some people don’t play it and they’re fine. Somebody like Ralph Rucci just says that’s not my shtick. He’s just stayed true to his work ethic and he’s developed a completely other kind of celebrity now — the social client who buys his things. He doesn’t have to give clothes away. I think designers have to stay true to their instinct. I don’t think fashion is the culprit here. It’s the media. I remember when we had shows and Paris Hilton and her sister would come and they’d be guests like anybody else. Now they create this media frenzy when they show up and I’m not sure I understand that.

Are there celebrities that you wish would just go away. Has anyone been banned from the tents?

There’s not celebrity that I can think of that we’ve had that kind of an issue with. There are photographers I can say that about and a few editors …

Editors! Come on Fern, name names!

There are a few fashionistas — for lack of a better name — who are marginally involved in the industry who seem to suck out a lot of air and we can never quite figure out how to get them out. There are some names for them like “lobby fleas.” If something is not nailed down, it seems to walk. They’re always carrying the biggest tote bags. They live and breathe and love being there. It’s their life.

I’ve stood in the back on the bleachers at shows and thought, if there’s an emergency of any kind, I’m toast. I think that the neighbor of the cousin of the dry cleaner has no business being there. It’s really annoying to people who have to be there and are thrown together with these hangers on.

Mind you, these people have an invitation that says “standing” that they get from the designer and that public relations firm. We don’t let people into those spaces without an invitation. So they have an invitation for one or two or three shows and then they get on the standing room line for another show. Generally they are vetted by those PR firms and those houses. Everybody over-invites because there are very bad manners in our industry about the number of people who actually rsvp so there’s always some padding.

There’s always some front row drama. Last season it was Marc Jacobs feuding with everyone in that explosive WWD interview after people complained about the very late starting time for his show. Any predictions about this season?

Well, Marc has changed his show date to the last Friday of the week so I know that changed a lot of people’s schedules and caused a little bit of shuffling. I never can predict what will be the issue of Fashion Week but I can guarantee you there always is one.

Shows like Project Runway, which you’ve been on, hype the bitchiness factor of the industry. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I just think it’s television. When I did my first appearance two seasons ago, the finalists came to our offices and the advice I gave to them was to be nice. I can’t tell you how much feedback I got from that. People said, “Thank you for saying that you don’t have to be a bitch to succeed in fashion.”

Did you always want to be in fashion and know you’d wind up there?

I think so. My dad was in the industry — he sold women’s scarves and accessories — and all my uncles were in the garment center. I used to always come into work with my dad. I was thrilled to see all the carts up and down the streets on Broadway and seeing the energy of that old garment center. I would always have lunch with him and his buyers and fashion directors from stores and that was very empowering seeing women in those jobs. I saw that was a career path. I loved clothing and all that came with that. All my summer jobs were fashion-related and I won a fashion design medal in high school.

And you were voted best dressed in your high school class. What’s in your closet these days?

Too much of everything. If I could do one thing, it would be to take some time off to just edit my closet. But it’s all good stuff that I love. I’m so attached to every single thing I buy.

You started your fashion career at Mademoiselle as a winner of their guest editor competition. Any lessons you learned there that still resonate today?

Today the guest editorship would have involved having a television camera follow you around. You learn a lot. You learn something every step of the way. I’ve never had a five-year plan. I’ve always just believed in doing your very best whereever you can and being completely passionate about it and the right things evolve and unfold.

That’s an interesting point you made about in today’s climate there would be camera tracking a guest editor a la Miss Seventeen on MTV. Have you ever been approached to do a reality show?

I was — a year ago after Project Runway and there were quite a few meetings. They really wanted somebody who was a screamer and would make people nuts. That’s not how I operate. I tried to say I think you can get just as much accomplished just by looking at somebody cross. One of the examples put forth to me was there would be three apprentice types who would come into your office and serve you coffee and spill it all over your desk. How would you react? I said it was more important to me to see how quickly they recovered and cleaned up it because obviously nobody does that on purpose.

What are the qualities one needs to succeed in fashion today?

They’re similar to those in almost every industry. You need to be smart, be aware. You need to have a point of view, read as much as you can, absorb as much as you can. You need to travel and see movies and work on charities. All those things that round you out as a better person make you a better professional. In fashion, it’s so much a part of all of those elements. It’s everywhere. I find that I get more accomplished on many days from being at lunch at Michael’s or going to one or two receptions or cocktail parties after work because you run into people and see people that you can’t get on the phone. I have a hard time conveying that to our younger staff who don’t go to anything. I’m forever trying to shuffle invitations around and most of them are too tired.

Is it harder to break into the business now than it was say even five years ago?

It depends on in what capacity. I think there are so many opportunities for young designers now. There are so many companies and sponsors that we work with that are constantly looking to support the talent. Our industry is filled with people who sniff out truffles — they can find talent anywhere, get behind it and help it. What our schools need are more creative business people who can help. I think there are way more media opportunities and a lot more of everything. You just have to be smart and not walk in the door chewing gum.

How has the Internet affected the business?

It’s opened up unbelievable opportunities for people. I’m still not sure who it is searching all these sites and blogs. That in and of itself is a full-time job. The immediacy of the information is kind of scary. It impacts more of our loyal print publications even Women’s Wear Daily and The New York Times who you go to for breaking news — seldom are they breaking the news because the minute somebody hears it, it’s out there. I was at a dinner in India where somebody was taking pictures and I said, “If this shows up on somebody’s Facebook you’re all toast!” With cell phone cameras it’s a little too much out there. There are no policemen on the Internet.

So many of these renegade fashion sites get more hits — certainly a lot more buzz — than the more established sites. They’re often not very informed about the business and have very little context. I think it’s harmful to credible fashion journalism.

I agree with you. It just makes it harder for us to decipher it and read through it and come to our own opinions. I think it makes you want to be more loyal to the people you do trust and read. Hopefully, they will remain at the top of their game. It makes you look more towards those people to help you navigate this.

What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?

That I’m still standing and doing this. I’m very proud of a lot of things I’ve accomplished in my career. Being of DIFFA’s board for 10 years raising millions of dollars for AIDs. Certainly helping to give the CFDA its voice and identity over the 10 years I was there with everything from Fashion Targets Breast Cancer to creating the initiative to organize the fashion shows. I’m extremely proud of something that I know has absolutely changed the face of fashion and has made a huge difference in people’s careers. I think at every step of the way I’ve been proud of the work I’ve accomplished. I’m glad that I’m still here and I still enjoy it.

What about your biggest disappointment?

I’d rather not think about that.

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

By putting one foot in front of the other. I really care about the industry and the people in it. I get behind everything I do because I think it’s the right thing to do and I always hope there is somebody at my side because we’re going to make money at it. For me, the motivating factor for doing the work I do is I know it’s helping people and it’s making a difference in people’s lives.

Do you have a motto?

One of the lines I quote a lot especially during fashion week is something my dad always said when we were growing up and it’s so true — “No two people should ever have to worry about the same thing.” That is very good motto to get through work — if someone else is worrying about something, you don’t have to. And also — “A good idea with a stupid person is not as powerful as a bad idea with a smart person.”

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and TVNewser. She writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.

Photo courtesy of Timothy Greenfield Sanders.

There are many cautionary tales in the news business, but to some Ashleigh Banfield’s seemingly meteoric rise and subsequent and self-described “banishment” from network news is a particularly chilling one. Having become one of NBC’s most visible faces and resonant voices in the wake of 9/11, Banfield went from reporting the headlines to making them and in doing so almost destroyed her career. Shortly after the attacks, she was criticized by some when she dyed her blonde hair brunette for a trip to Afghanistan (Something that still makes Banfield bristle). Then, in the spring of 2003, her remarks made during a lecture at Kansas State University about what she believed were the media’s mistakes in their coverage of the Iraq war seemed to seal her fate. She told her audience: “I’m hoping that I will have a future in news in cable, but not the way some cable news operators wrap themselves in the American flag … Free speech is a wonderful thing, it’s what we fight for, but the minute it’s unpalatable we fight against it for some reason.” Her statements angered her bosses at NBC, who, says Banfield, exacted punishment by making her sit on the sidelines until her contract ran out.

Today, Banfield is fighting her way back from her perch at Court TV where she offers the “man on the street” perspective among the network’s legal eagles. While she is no longer trudging through war zones, Banfield is still waging her own battles to be heard (“women 40 and over, unite!”) and remains unbowed about her outspokenness and her desire to carve out a career on her own terms.

“Even my failures I look at as successes because I am not gone,” she says.

Name: Ashleigh Banfield
Position: Co-host, Banfield and Ford: Courtside; host, Hollywood Heat
Resume: Joined Court TV as a substitute host in July 2005; Anchor/correspondent for MSNBC and NBC News correspondent from 2000 until 2004; anchor at KDFW, a Fox affiliate in Dallas; freelanced as an associate producer for ABC’s World News Tonight. Began her television career in 1988 as a photographer/researcher/reporter in Ontario, Canada.
Birthdate: December 29, 1967
Hometown: Winnipeg, Manitoba
Education: BA in political studies & French from Queens University in Ontario
Marital status: Married to Howard Gould, founder of Equator Environmental, since July 2004; two sons Jay Fischer Gould (‘Fischer’), 2, (“Named after the famous robber baron Jay Gould who is his great -great -great grandfather”) and Ridley Banfield Gould, six months.
First section of Sunday Times: “If I get to read anything these days which is rare, that would be Tom Friedman.”
Favorite television show: “The Daily Show. It is clearly the best production on television now and ever. I never miss it. When I was on maternity leave, I Tivoed every single one.”
Guilty pleasure: “That would have to be Howard Stern. [Laughs] I have admired Howard Stern’s resilience. There’s not a lot of other stuff I admire about his content, but there’s something about Howard Stern and his perseverance in a very difficult industry. He does tickle me in certain ways with humor. Obviously, he’s very over the top and very inappropriate most of the time, but I do find him intriguing. My husband and I have outfitted the cars with Sirius Satellite Radio because of him.”
Last book read: 1776 by David McCullough. I literally have one more chapter to go. I hate to say it, but I’m reading it alongside The Great American Citizenship Quiz because I’m prepping for the test.”

How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

I would have to say sheer perseverance because this is not the friendliest of industries — it’s not for anyone without a thick elephant skin. I just truly love what I do and if you don’t love what you do, you’re going to be at work every day. Because I love what I do, I’ve never worked a day in my life.

What do you consider your best work on-air?

It’s a tough question because some of the best things I’ve done have been the worst things that have happened. Clearly, 9/11 would have to be some of the best work that I’ve done because I was working without a template and that was very difficult. Having nearly been victimized by the north tower, it was difficult to remain composed and be informative.

How long were you on air?

Nine days.

What was that like?

It was riveting in every sense of the word. It was troubling. It was the most complex moment in my career in terms of trying to decipher A) what was happening moment by moment and B) what was happening to us as a nation. We underwent this metamorphosis overnight and I think we were all trying to understand our new reality. It was difficult to find that new reality while you were traipsing around on a moonscape. I was thoroughly confused for nine days in so many ways.

One of the most iconic images from the newscasts at Ground Zero was when you were interviewing that woman with the baby and a building started to come down behind you. How long did that haunt your dreams?

Most people remember that because it was televised but there was so much more that wasn’t. They all haunt me equally. I lost two friends that day. [Sighs] It all is a sad smear in my life. I try not think about it very often. I think about it when I have to on anniversaries and during interviews. For the most part, I try to avoid it. Because honest to God, I don’t think anyone of us who ever stepped foot down there will not have a quiver in our voice when we try to recall those events. It will always remain a pit in my stomach. It seems like decades ago and yet it was yesterday in so many respects.

In the months following 9/11 you were being touted as one of NBC rising stars. The New York Post even mentioned you as possible successor to Katie Couric’s. Then, just as quickly, it seemed as if you dropped out of sight. What happened?

The Iraq war started to develop and I gave a very controversial speech at Kansas State [University] about the press’s responsibility in covering international affairs. I sent out a cautionary note to all my colleagues covering this conflict and chastened the press corps not to wave the banner and cover warfare in a jingoistic way. It didn’t sit well with my employers at NBC — who are no longer there. I think they overacted. I was banished. I sat in the outfield for a long time. I think it’s cause célèbre today for everyone to realize the mistakes of many — not just the media and the administration — in the Iraq war and the ensuing quagmire. At the time it was either bold or stupid or both. I know now the cost [of speaking out], but it would never have made a difference.

When did you officially leave NBC?

I left in 2004 — a few months after my contract expired. I was very much in the warehouse while my contract petered out.

Looking back on that time, what were the biggest lessons you learned?

On one hand you could say, “Keep your mouth shut while our nation is embroiled in war,” but I don’t think that was a responsible way to behave. If I have been fortunate enough to have risen to level in this business where people would actually listen to me, then I think I have a duty to convey all truths that I encounter. I felt it was my duty at the time. I was a war correspondent who had seen that the hearts and minds of the Arab world were not that easy to win. I had seen that the street in the Arab world were on fire and angry and that smashing campaigns may not be as simple as the headlines were making them out to be. I felt it was my duty to speak up. Very few people are fortunate enough to walk through countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and I had seen them all. I had spoken to many on the street. I felt I had a solid editorial grounding for saying the things I said. Despite the enormous cost to me professionally, personally, and emotionally, I would not have changed a thing.

How did you wind up at Court TV?

[Former Court TV head] Henry Schleiff and I were talking at a social event about the network and he recommended I come in and talk to him. I never thought I’d be doing legal [reporting] — I don’t know why. I’ve done every beat in the journalism book, but I hadn’t done legal. I thought it was only the domain of lawyers — and it is. Everybody here is a lawyer but me. [Laughs] But it turns out there is space for inquiring minds among the attorneys here and I bring a different perspective to a lot of the interviews and the questioning here. It’s the perspective of the man on the street who doesn’t have a Juris Doctorate. Thank God for Henry. He recognized that I actually could prevail in this extremely difficult environment.

I think there’s some confusion over the re-branding of the network. Court TV will officially become Tru TV in January. Will your responsibilities change as a result of the relaunch? What does it mean to you?

You’re talking to the wrong girl. [Laughs] I was out on Halloween trick or treating with my babies when all of that information started getting passed around.

There was a recent story in Elle that deconstructed various female anchors and reporters’ on-air look. The piece made a particular point of saying you went from blonde to brunette to boost your credibility. Care to comment?

That’s wrong and extremely short-sighted. If they had actually done some research or given me a call, I went from blonde to brunette because I was going to Afghanistan. This is nine days after terrorists had just killed 3,000 of my neighbors. There was a whole different dynamic playing out in those days. I love it when people say I was some brave, courageous reporter. I wasn’t, I was just shit scared. [Laughs]. Sorry to say I was absolutely terrified about the assignment. It was the No. 1 refused assignment in the history of NBC news.

Really?

Even the producer assigned to go with me changed her mind and backed out after her children asked her not to go. I started to worry about all the time I’d spent in the Middle East prior to 9/11. What a tall beacon I appeared to be with my blonde hair. All of sudden the dynamics of the world had changed and the Arab terrorists were looking to kill us no matter what. I didn’t want to stand out and give them the upper hand. I’ll tell you something — as much flack as I took — it all ended the day Daniel Pearl died. No one ever said a word about me and my effort to blend in as a journalist in Pakistan and Afghanistan after that because they recognized that it was true. There were bounties on our heads. There was a $40,000 bounty on all American journalists heads as we were traveling from Jalalabad to Kabul. I had to hire an army of Muhajadin soldiers — 25 of them with rocket propelled grenades.

Did you personally or the network hire them?

I did, myself. I did with my producer, photographer, and audio engineer. The four of us negotiated a small Mujadine army to the governor of Nagarhar Province in Afghanistan to protect us. It was bad. This was a very ugly place that we were going and it remains an ugly place. So I think it was very short sighted of whoever wrote that. I never had a problem with my credibility. If there are people out there who think that credibility comes with hair color, that’s their issue, not mine.

I seem to remember your choice of eyewear got a lot of attention at the time as well. Did that bug you?

I find it a fascinating study of inequality on the air because men have been wearing glasses forever and there’s nary a headline published about that.

Is there anything that women in positions of power on air can realistically do about the double standard?

I’m no idiot. I know that I sleep in the bed that I made. I understand that women are scrutinized at a level that is not commensurate with men but, there are times when it becomes ridiculous. There are times when it is obviously overkill. I think eventually it will wane. I hope it happens in my lifetime, but I don’t know.

One of the biggest challenges women at all levels face is juggling a career with motherhood. How do you do it?

It’s tough. I had a great conversation last night with Elizabeth Vargas. She also has two young boys and is trying to juggle network responsibilities. We both recognize we have had to scale back our ambitions and our endeavors. We make these choices voluntarily. We recognize that this career isn’t going anywhere. That television business isn’t leaving and we’re not leaving it, we’re just repositioning our strategies; we’re changing our timeframes and our timelines. Thank God women over 40 are still welcome in this business. I think there was a time long ago when you weren’t. I bristled every time this summer as I was covering Phil Spector’s case that the defense would bring up Lana Clarkson was “40, a B-Movie actress and her career was over.” I bristled every single time because I am turning 40 and I think my career is getting better. I think with every year, I get better and I think that’s reflected in the assignments I’m given.

I can’t tell you how many women I interview for this column take the fifth on the birthday question.

Not me, man. I have openly said I was 190 pounds on the on-air [when I was pregnant] and I’ve often openly said I am turning 40 and I wish more people would do it. I wear it like a badge of honor. I’ve been in this business for 20 years and I always felt like I didn’t know enough. Recently, I had an epiphany that with every year I age, I get smarter and there’s nothing better in this business than that. By the way, I’m not 190 anymore. [Laughs] I’m working on it, but it’s not easy. [Laughs] I’m doing the countdown on the air. This week I hit 140.

What do you consider your greatest success?

Oh, my boys Fischer and Ridley. I can’t believe I pulled it off. Often I’ll look at photographs of them and think, “Whose kids are those?” [Laughs]

What about your biggest disappointment?

My biggest disappointment in life and work has been what we talked about earlier — the reaction to what I felt was a legitimate point of view at the commencement of the war on terror and the ramifications I suffered. I don’t think that’s the way Americans truly operate. I’m so thrilled to be in this country by choice. I am taking my citizenship exam in six months and will be waving that flag and swearing in with so much pride. I think most people who are here by birthright have no idea how special it really is for those who have to really work for it. That was a biggest disappointment when my free speech cost me so much.

Do you have a five-year plan?

I’ve always looked at the 25-year plan — especially in this business. If you set aside your plan I think you’ll be regularly disappointed. I have been on as many dips as peaks — if not more. I look at Regis [Philbin]. Regis really hit it in his 70s. If I manage to do it before I’m 75, I’ll be thrilled. I’ve always looked every step along the way as a success. Even my failures I look at as successes because I’m not gone. Every time I fail, I look at it as a positive if I’m not completely wiped out. If I didn’t have that perspective I would have been wiped off the face of broadcasting about a dozen times by now.

Do you have a motto?

I do have one. I think people should have one, if not then a song. [Laughs] I keep it on my desktop, too. It’s “People who expect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and never will be.” I always have felt that is something we all should live by not just journalists. It’s an American mantra. Especially at this time — we’re at a turning point in this country and we need to understand the value of being American. If we don’t find the courage in ourselves to seek truth and to pass it on, then I’m not sure that we’re doing our founding fathers any justice.

Diane Clehane is a contributing editor to FishbowlNY and TVNewser. She writes the Lunch at Michael’s column.