Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American journalist Jessica Savitch.
Last updated on November 23, 2024.
Jessica Beth Savitch was an American television journalist, best known for being the weekend anchor of NBC Nightly News and daily newsreader for NBC News during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Savitch was one of the first women to anchor an evening network newscast solo, following in the footsteps of Marlene Sanders of ABC News and Catherine Mackin of NBC News. She also hosted PBS's public affairs program Frontline from its January 1983 debut until her death as a passenger in an automobile accident later that year.
The better the coverage, the more discriminating the viewer.
A press card does not provide you with an invisible shield. You're flesh and blood.
When I first anchored in 1970, I had never seen a woman anchor a news show.
Never refuse an assignment except when there is a conflict of interest, a potential of danger to you or your family, or you hold a strongly biased attitude about the subject under focus.
The code of the road is, if there is anything to eat, eat; if there is a place to sit, sit; if there is a restroom, go.
To get it first is important - but more important is to get it right.
Television news is a delicate balance of serving public good and private gain.
The news anchor is exactly that - an anchor, a center, a focus.
In every interview I have ever read or seen or taken part in, the final question in our future-oriented society is always, What next?
The most important event I covered was the Panama Canal debate, which dragged on for months.
A fact of modern life is that it takes women longer to get ready than men.
My goal was to be a network correspondent by the time I was 30.
In real life, events seem much less dramatic.
When for so long you can't get a job for reasons that seem specious, you you finally do have it, you are constantly afraid of losing it.
Men still control the news, both on and off camera.
What is the value of sticking a microphone in a man's face right after he has learned of his wife's death?
The relationship between talent and management is uneasy, at best.
No matter how many goals you have achieved, you must set your sights on a higher one.
Women were seldom given quality assignments or adequate air time.
Being a novelty had its advantages.
I don't exactly know what it means to be ready. A cake when the oven timer goes off? Am I fully baked, or only half-baked?
Every time I am in danger of believing the glamour of my own press, some incident inevitably brings me back to earth.
My most lucrative job in college was a stint as the regional Dodge Girl.
Shootouts are not gunfights of honor, they're gang wars and racial riots.
News events are like Texas weather. If you don't like it, wait a minute.
News events cannot be controlled, nor can newscasts be mapped out like entertainment shows.
Walking into a room filled with people you don't know but who know you brings out your worst vulnerabilities.
Women may not have it easy, but we are given a fairer chance to reach for the top.
News reporting is a cycle: No matter how much you work at sending a message, it's only successful if it's received.
How valuable NBC Magazine was in my career is questionable.
The bad news is that 50 people died in a hotel fire; the good news is that we got exclusive footage.
By far my most perilous assignment was covering a tank car explosion.
The single life is not one I willingly chose for myself.
Television is intensely personal.
For every two minutes of glamour, there are eight hours of hard work.
One reason I left local news was that I was tired of the constant musical chairs among news directors.
The minute viewers callin or write about your looks, they were not listening to what you were saying.
It is my belief that one's salary is between an individual and the IRS.
You can easily die racing to cover a bank robbery as you can in a war zone.
Newscasters cannot call attention to themselves by being too attractive or too unattractive.
The latest wrinkle is on wrinkles. There is a widespread belief that women can't grow old in television news.
I very much wanted to be accepted by my peers, to be considered a serious journalist.
I worked half my life to be an overnight success, and still it took me by surprise.
I hadn't realized until I covered the police beat just how seedy crime is.
Texas was defined by its larger-than-life characters, particularly politicians.
I have had a lifelong phobia of snakes.
In the beginning, my mother humored me when I told her I wanted to be a reporter.
When I was a little girl in the 1950s, it would not have been possible for me to say, I want to be an anchorwoman when I grow up.
My current goal is to place a moratorium on goals.
Some news managers have been slow to grasp that good television news is always substance over form.
Mistakes are not always the result of someone's ineptitude.
Our free enterprise system of disseminating information is collectively referred to as The Media. But there is no collective.
In interviews I gave early on in my career, I was quoted as saying it was possible to have it all: a dynamic job, marriage, and children. In some respects, I was a social adolescent.
Anyone who writes an autobiographical work at the age of 34 is, at best, presumptuous. It occurred to me that it was time to set the record straight.
It had not occurred to me that marriage requires the same effort as a career. And unlike a career, marriage requires a joint effort.
Although I was entirely relaxed on camera, if I had to stand up and say something to an assembled group of people, I was rendered all but inarticulate.
The idea of stardom was difficult to grasp. It was like being schizophrenic; there was her, the woman on television, and the real me.
Women didn't want to watch other women on television because they were jealous of their husbands' diverted attention.
Many senators have developed a canny sense of what will play best for the audience.
The relationship between talent — a term loosely applied to those who work on-air — and management is uneasy, at best.