RIP, PJ

One of my fonder childhood memories is of listening to the theme music from Wall Street Week in Review with Louis Rukeyser floating up from the downstairs tv set as I lay reading in bed. My mom made us go to bed at 7:30 every Friday night so she could watch it; it was followed by another commentary program on, I think, world news. When I went away to college -- and even today -- I wasn't allowed to call when the news was on. My mother watches the local and national broadcasts -- and the Daily Show. She reads two papers a day.

So when I saw at 7 a.m. that Peter Jennings had passed away, I immediately called my mom. Of course, she knew. She'd heard at 5 am and my dad had read whispers the night before on the Drudge Report.

My mother's father was a newspaperman; he founded a Sunday paper that's still around today, albeit in a slightly different form. Ben Bradlee worked with him as a young man. Her brother is a newspaperman now and her niece is being trained to take the helm as editor and publisher. I majored in journalism in college. My parents took an ad out in the yearbook that congratulated me and offered hope I'd take over one day for Eleanor Clift on the McLaughlin Group. While I'm not a reporter (nor, rats!, on the McLaughlin Group), I am a writer, and I have deep respect for the people who cover the world. It's a tough, tough business for all but a few.

And of course it wasn't tough for Peter Jennings. And he was on the tube as opposed to in print. But he was the last of the line for people my age, people who can't remember a time before he and Dan and Tom. I liked him. And I'm sad that he's gone.