On this day
June 16, 2014 (WABC) -- This is a big date in history. June 17. Yes, there's the O.J. Simpson "slow speed chase" on I-405 in his Bronco as he and his pal Al Cowlings decided to drive south to (where? Mexico?) rather than surrender to the LAPD on charges that Simpson killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
I watched the chase on TV, with Good Morning America cameras rolling, with former pro football great Jim Brown, who worried that his pal Simpson had gone off the rails. He's a cocaine fiend, Brown told us, the first acknowledgement from anyone of Simpson's pals that drugs may have been a factor affecting his behavior.
The other big date for me is a bigger date in the history of the country. 42 years ago today, several bumbling burglars were busted breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. The scandal that became known simply as Watergate was born, as the burglars were actually in the employ of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), the President being Richard Nixon.
Two years later, Nixon would resign, and the country had been changed. In the process, a whole new generation of journalists was born, and I was among them.
And so now I'll add to my personal scrapbook the date of June 17 as the day that I decided to stop writing my blog. I've been penning (is that even a word anymore in this day of computers?) Behind The News since early 2001, when I added anchoring the 6 p.m. newscast to my daily chores. I had been anchoring the 11 o'clock news since October 1999, and when Bill Beutel decided he wanted to curtail his daily anchor duties, and I was honored to take his place, I started writing a daily blog.
The goal was to have a place to talk about issues, engage you, our viewers, and, oh by the way, help promote our 11 p.m. newscast.
I could quote our 43rd President and say, "Mission Accomplished," but with the situation in Iraq devolving into something far worse than before we invaded 11 years ago, I'll refrain.
The bigger truth about this daily column is that it began when "social media" referred to watching TV with your friends. Which means before Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and (fill in the blank).
I've been thinking about how Behind The News fits in with all the other ways we now communicate with people, the other ways I now communicate with viewers. Back when I started this, the theory was that we'd send it out via email before people left for home, so that they could see the email at work. The implication was that folks didn't always check their email at home.
Then came the explosion of social media, and now we check messages and so much more on hand held devices. There's certainly an argument that we might do that too much, but I'll leave that for another day.
In any event, come July 3, Behind The News will be retired. I will, however, continue to write from my heart on Facebook and Twitter, where so many of you are posting and reading regularly. And over the next couple of weeks I will write this blog and remind you that it's about to end. The interactivity of Facebook and Twitter seems a more healthy way to put out information than the more formal format of an email column like this. That said, I thank the thousands of you who subscribe to Behind The News. I've enjoyed writing it, more than I could ever express in this space.
That's what's on my mind as we prep tonight's 11 p.m. newscast. We'll have any breaking news of the night, plus Meteorologist Lee Goldberg's AccuWeather forecast, and Rob Powers with the night's sports. I hope you can join Sade Baderinwa and me, tonight at 11.
BILL RITTER
Subscribe to my page on Facebook at facebook.com/billritter.wabc.
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