Scott Gurvey's Public Offerings

I heard him long before I met him. I remember sitting in the cafeteria CBS had set up in the basement of New York’s Madison Square Garden to feed the hundreds of staff members it had brought to the 1976 Democratic National Convention. Believe it or not, in those days the political conventions meant something and, in part because of legal requirements, they were extensively covered by broadcasters.

Just two years out of journalism school, I had been sent by my employer, WBBM-TV, the CBS owned station in my hometown Chicago, to manage our coverage. Along with me was a terrific video crew and a wonderful reporter who needed no supervision and little assistance, and an anchorman who definitely needed both. Those are stories for another day. Today, I just want to talk about the voice.

As I sat down to grab a bite between assignments, I heard the voice say, “Do you mind if I sit here?” I knew immediately who it was, and somewhat flustered, looked up and said, “Mister Osgood, you can sit anywhere you want to!” That began an acquaintanceship which lasted decades. Charles Osgood, broadcaster extraordinaire, died last week at the age of ninety-one.

He laughed, sat, and engaged me in conversation, making me feel ten feet tall by expressing interest in my story and plans for the future. He told me to keep in touch and feel free to reach out to him if there was anything he could do to help. For the rest of the convention, every time we passed in the hall he would smile and wave.

Osgood’s accolades have been immortalized by an outpouring of sadness and affection throughout the journalism profession. His passing was noted in depth by virtually all stations, networks, and newspapers. It is rare for a journalist to be so respected by both colleagues and competitors.

I have discovered in the past week that my experience with him at the start of my career was far from unusual. He apparently took a major interest in helping the next generation of broadcasters trying to follow the path he helped blaze. It seems scores of us have wonderful stories to tell of our first meeting with him.

I refer you to the reporting by CBS Sunday Morning, the program he hosted for twenty-two years. And the personal remembrance of Ted Koppel, another of my heroes and one of broadcast journalism’s greats.

I first heard Osgood’s voice when I arrived as a freshman at college near New York and within reach of WCBS Newsradio 88, the CBS owned New York radio station. The station has just switched to an all-news format. That was the first time I heard that style and it quickly became the station my clock radio woke me to every school morning. Osgood was one of the first WCBS news anchors. His voice was also something I had never heard. Deep and authoritative but at the same time conversational, friendly. The voice of someone you felt you knew. Or wanted to know.

And then there were the “Osgood Files“, his trademark commentaries which could be on issues of major import, or slice of life stories about everyday people doing everyday things reported in a manner worth calling to our attention. Osgood often delivered these comments in rhyme, and I remember many. He published a series of books containing the scripts which are both a history lesson of our times and a lesson in great radio writing.

One stands out in my mind as clearly as if it were yesterday. Nearly 45 years ago, November 4, 1979, Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took fifty-two American diplomats hostage. They demanded the United States return the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was receiving treatment in a New York hospital. The U.S. refused. Just as a sidenote here, since so many people love to scream about violations of international law, the taking of a foreign embassy and holding diplomats hostage is about the worst violation of international law and diplomatic norms as one can find.

The Iranians complained in numerous press conferences about western news outlet’s characterization of the events as a hostage taking act. Osgood wrote the next morning in his Osgood File a report detailing what had happened in his usual calm and matter of fact voice. But every stanza of his exposition ended with the phrase, “There are fifty-two American hostages being held in Iran.” If the phrase annoyed the Iranians, he was ready to repeat it over and over again.

I wrote him through the CBS interoffice mail, letting him know how effective I found that comment. He wrote back thanking me. We continued the relationship even as he climbed the ladder of CBS News and I left to join PBS in New York. I wish I had worked harder to see him more often. He was extremely helpful and supportive when I first arrived in the big apple and was searching for the right voice coach to help me with my delivery. There was a great lunch I remember organized by an old WCBS Newsradio hand who I knew as a professor in my graduate program.

I know he had complimented my work to some third parties when they mentioned they knew me. That made me proud. And he said he was honored to learn that to this day I hand out the text of one of his commentaries to the students I teach. I am often challenged by my students and others who want to know why the news seems so depressing. The best answer I have ever heard comes from Osgood in a piece titled, “Why the News You’ve Gotten is Mostly Rotten.”

In the commentary, interestingly also written in 1979, Osgood details the many types of reporting which present need to know information for the audience. He stresses that it is mostly the unusual, not the usual, which makes news. And he concludes with:

… that’s why you don’t hear a lot of good news
About planes that land safely with riders and crews
And weather that’s lovely and earth that won’t quake
And government leaders being not on the take.
It’s not that such things don’t happen; they do–
All the time-which is why they are not news or new.
If no news is good news, it follows (to me)
That good news is no news, I say Q.E.D.

Why the News You’ve Gotten Is Mostly Rotten, Charles Osgood, 1979

Rest in peace Charles Osgood. And thank you.

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