SALON

Wednesday, Sep 2, 2009 7:03 PM UTC

She is anchorwoman, hear her roar

Diane Sawyer may not be "perky," but in taking over "World News Tonight" she's still facing a notorious boys club

By

Topics: Broadsheet,

She is anchorwoman, hear her roarDiane Sawyer appears on ABC's "Good Morning America" show, in New York, Friday, August 21, 2009.

AP Photo/Charles Sykes

Diane Sawyer appears on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show, in New York, Friday, August 21, 2009.

When ABC announced this morning that Charlie Gibson will be retiring from “World News Tonight” in January, the network simultaneously welcomed a new anchor, a journalist who has won Emmys, Dupont Awards, Robert F. Kennedy awards, Investigative Reporters and Editors Association Awards, and George Foster Peabody Awards for public service, one who has been inducted into the Broadcast Magazine Hall of Fame and Television Academy of Fame, and has interviewed presidents and reported from Ground Zero. A journalist who will also be only the second solo female anchor in network news history.

Diane Sawyer, the co-anchor of “Good Morning America” and host of a regular series of “Primetime” interviews, won’t officially be the first woman to sit in the ABC anchor chair, though few have filled it. In 1976, Barbara Walters became the first female network anchor — and the highest-paid journalist in America – when she started sharing the desk with Frank Reynolds. (At CBS, Connie Chung spent two years co-anchoring the “CBS Evening News” with Dan Rather before being canned.

More recently, Elizabeth Vargas shared the “World News Tonight” gig with Bob Woodruff in 2006, a stint that was cut short for both when Woodruff was injured in Iraq and Vargas became pregnant. (And no, you could not make up two more poetically gender-specific occupational hazards.)

So can Sawyer expect a hazing similar to the one Katie Couric endured when she took CBS’s anchor seat in 2006? It likely won’t be quite so bad. She doesn’t have Dan Rather’s legendary shoes to fill, nor does she have to overcome a damning reputation as “perky” and ”funsy.” Sawyer’s already one of the most influential women in media (not far behind Tyra Banks), a reporter with enough range to do a documentary on Appalachian poverty and some serious Whitney Houston-herding just this morning.

She will, however, bear the scrutiny that comes from being in very elite company. This is what comes of being not just a female journalist but also one who has the temerity to be over the age of 35. Because CNN still wears a lot of ties. Because on FOX Business News, journalistic integrity will get you approximately as far as being a former model or flight attendant does. Because Stephen Colbert excepted, Maxim generally doesn’t refer to male journalists as “tasty titans of the teleprompter,” nor does AskMen.com rank Wolf Blitzer and Matt Lauer according to their hotness. Because the notion of the former America’s Junior Miss delivering the nightly news still gives some people the willies. The Boston.com TV blog was quick this morning to note that “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams is now “odd man out.” In his blog for Hartford Courant this morning, critic Roger Catlin fired off that ”Come next year, women will dominate and men will be the endangered species,” adding that “With Couric at CBS and Sawyer at ABC, Brian Williams at NBC will be the sole male anchor in a field which until earlier this decade had enjoyed decades of stability.” Women doing the news! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!

That’s why it matters. Come January, Diane Sawyer will get to sleep in a little later in the morning, and at nighttime, she will be part of a pantheon that includes Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley and Peter Jennings. She will have earned it. And that’s good news indeed.

Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 35 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations