Kevin Newman's back in town

The Hill Times, February 4th, 2008

What's a nice guy like you doing in a town like this?
Global National's Kevin Newman hopes to take his news show deeper into the decision-makers in Ottawa.
By Meghan Moloney

When Kevin Newman co-hosted Good Morning America in New York City, he couldn´t shop for shoes without the paparazzi following him.

These days, as Global National´s anchor, Mr. Newman has returned to Ottawa in what he calls "a homecoming," and has had "real life" back for a number of years.

After six weeks on the job as co-anchor of Good Morning America, he was pushed out because of ratings. He later worked as a correspondent for ABC´s late-night current events show, Nightline. But he eventually returned to Canada after a decade with ABC News to establish and help build Global´s evening news program in Vancouver, saying it was a creative opportunity he couldn´t pass up.

In an interview with The Hill Times at his office, he said he hopes that as anchor of the TV national news from Ottawa, it will give the program a deeper perspective and more access to the decision-makers of the country.


When did you decide to move Global National´s broadcast to Ottawa?

"We´re not moving the whole broadcast here. We´re just moving me because in the 21st Century, you´re able to put your resources where they make sense. And for us, it makes sense for us to have our editorial and technical team based in Vancouver and it makes sense to have me based here so that I can get to the scene of things a little more quickly. So what they´ve done in order to bridge this 5,000-kilometre gap, they´ve built a big, fat digital pipeline that I don´t understand, but it seems to be able to make things happen. So instead of even three years ago, two years ago, we would have had to do this by satellite. Now we can do it by what we call net-pipe. So we don´t have to use satellites, it´s a lot less expensive, it´s ours, so it´s completely reliable–you know, we don´t have to worry about solar storms, or any of that kind of stuff that you have to worry about with satellites. So we´re connected between Vancouver and Ottawa with something physical."


Why did the network decide to move you here?

"Like the other guys, I´m a travelling anchor, and I like to get to the scene of where things are happening and Vancouver is a wonderful place to live and to work, but it´s a hard place to travel from, because it´s right on the very Western Coast. The airport east shuts down at 8 p.m. So you can´t really scramble from Vancouver easily if you´re an anchor. From here, I can get to New York in an hour, I can get to Washington in an hour, I can get to Toronto in an hour, I can get to Montreal quickly. So here I´m closer to the scene of where most news happens than I was in Vancouver."


How do you think your job as an anchor will change?

"I´m hoping I´m going to get to do more field reporting, because I´m closer to it and getting out of the office–getting out from behind the desk. I mean, I just came back from Pakistan, where we did a series of broadcasts from Pakistan and that kind of stuff is good for me because my grounding is in–I was a reporter for most of my career. So when I talk about something I like to have some understanding of what the place looks like and some understanding of what the people are like. So if I can be there more often, I think that will help the broadcast. Plus, you know, the other thing this gives us, it allows us a little bit better access to decision-makers, because we´re still only a seven-year-old broadcast. I think especially on Parliament Hill, there´s an institutional belief that the CBC and the CTV news are the 50-year-old TV news institutions here. Ours is younger, but what we need to do is remind the opinion-makers and the decision-makers on the Hill that we are as competitive and as important to Canadians now as the other two guys."


Are you the only national anchor in Ottawa now?

"Yes. Peter [Mansbridge of CBC´s The National] and Lloyd [Robertson of CTV National News] are both in Toronto. This is my fourth time living in Ottawa, so if there´s any place that feels like home to me, it´s actually Ottawa. I´ve covered Parliament Hill for all three networks. So this is very much like a homecoming for me."


Before returning to Canada in 2001, you worked for ABC News in New York for seven years and you were quite the star–you co-hosted Good Morning America and were later a correspondent for ABC´s late-night current-events show, Nightline–what made you decide to go to the U.S. in the first place?

"A job offer. [He laughs.] You know, it wasn´t an easy decision because I´m a Canadian boy and I´ve never lost that. But sometimes it´s good to test yourself against the best in the world, and some of the best journalists work for the American networks in New York. So I thought, well, I´m just going to learn some stuff. There are a lot of Canadians that work down there. I really enjoyed my time there. I liked my colleagues, I loved meeting and getting to know Americans better, I loved getting rid of any of that sort of latent anti-American notions that many Canadians have, and understanding America better which I think is important. But I never felt wholly American. So I was able to hold onto my Canadian-ness and eventually knew I wanted to come home."


Did you experience any anti-Canadian sentiment while you were down there?

"No, not at all. We´re like the nice cousins."


What were the main differences between being a national news anchor in the U.S. and in Canada, besides the money?

"There are a lot of similarities. I guess what´s different is that the stakes are higher in the United States. There´s just more money on the line. You have more advertising dollars pulled in. They expect results quickly. They put a lot of money behind you when you are an anchor in the United States and that´s really good, because you have all the tools that you need, but they expect results within weeks, not years. I think in Canada we´re still more patient with our expectations of broadcast growth. I think the celebrity intensity is far greater in the United States than it is in Canada. I couldn´t shop for shoes in the United States. Here, I can pretty well have a real life. It´s a good question, because I haven´t actually compared it. I´ve never actually thought of myself as a national anchor, just sort of a guy that does work. In Canadian broadcasting, you´re always constrained by budgets, and you have to rationalize everything. In America, there was really no constraint. What they demanded was success, however, and if you weren´t successful, they were very quick to move on. And in the case of Good Morning America, in my case, we weren´t successful after six weeks and they started to move on."


How did they measure success?

"Ratings. When I took over Good Morning America, the ratings had been slumping for two years. They continued to slump in the first six weeks and that´s all it took for them to say, ´Okay, this isn´t working.´"


Why did you decide to return to Canada? Most stay.

"A creative challenge. The American networks, as were CBC and CTV, they have a style, they have a way of doing things, and what your job is, is to bring a little bit of yourself to that but to not upset the apple-cart too much. And what I wanted was the challenge to create something that felt right to me, and Global was starting up a newscast at the same time. I came back for opportunity and that surprises some Canadians, because they always think opportunity only exists in America. There is a ton of opportunity in Canada, particularly creative opportunity–if you grasp it."


You were also a Hill reporter for CBC and CTV. What are the biggest changes in Hill reporting?

"I don´t know. I haven´t done it for 15 years. This is my first time back in 15 years. I mean, when I left here, last time, I was a reporter for CBC TV´s The National. So I have no idea. I am surprised by how many people that were here 15 years ago are still here. In Washington, there´s far more reporter turnover than there seems to be in Ottawa. So many of the people who were my colleagues 15, 20 years ago will once again be my colleagues. The thing is, I´m not really here to be a Hill reporter. I´m the anchor of a national broadcast that encompasses all kinds of news. The benefit is that I will have access to a lot of very smart people and a lot of influential people to enhance the overall reporting on the broadcast."


As anchor, what do you do? What´s your average day?

"This is the easiest job in the business. It´s generally 9 to 5. It´s stressful because everything reflects on you. But as far as hard work, this is not the hardest work I´ve done. But I think I´ve earned it by hard work. It´s been hard to sort of establish a brand new national newscast. That´s hard work. But I haven´t done that alone, there´s been people in the trenches with me."


Who has been your favourite interview?

"My hardest interview was Nelson Mandela, because I didn´t know what to ask the man. I interviewed him right after he came out of prison. There was a concert for him at Wembley in London, and I was so overwhelmed and intimidated by him. As I get older, I enjoy talking about spiritual strengths, so I had a chance to interview the Dalai Lama and Bishop [Desmond] Tutu and a few others. You know, politicians generally can be frustrating to interview. The challenge is to bust through the message track. But every once in awhile, if you prepare properly and if you think about the question you want to ask, you can pierce through it. Barbara Walters actually gave me the best question to ask anybody who´s on a message track, and that´s ´How do you know that?´ Because it instantly forces the interview subject to actually justify what they´ve just said, and it decimates message track. So I´ve always kept that in a back pocket."


What do you like the most about your job?

"I like learning constantly. I like seeing something happen and saying, ´We should really tell Canadians about that.´ It sounds simple but it´s a tremendous privilege and it involves tremendous power–that if something I´m curious about, I have to assume that others might be, and I can satisfy Canadians´ curiosity about things and it´s just a fantastic place to be."


What do you find the hardest?

"I´ve been anchoring on a high-wire act now for about 15 years at some pretty prominent places. I think the hardest part is coping with the stress of being on stage five nights a week through the year. There´s a performance anxiety aspect of this that I don´t think anybody ever gets over, and if you can imagine being an actor on a Broadway stage for 15 years, five days a week, I think that takes its toll over time. Because this is the last live television–there´s no net, ever. So even though you´ve got a great team behind you, you´re always in the back of your mind conscious that one plug can suddenly not be attached and you have to respond. So you´re always in a fight or flight mode with your adrenaline and I think over time that begins to wear you down. I mean, I look at Lloyd and Peter who´ve been doing it a lot longer than I have and I have nothing but admiration for the fact that they have survived this experience as long as they have, because it´s very intense."


Of all the foreign locations where you´ve reported on or from which you´ve anchored, which were the most interesting or rewarding?

"The scariest was always Baghdad. I found my Afghanistan experience interesting last year, because it was unlike any place I´d ever visited. I got to see beyond the uniforms of our soldiers, which was gratifying. I got to look in the eyes of Afghans and try to figure out what they were thinking. And I learned a lot of shades of grey through the experience in Afghanistan, that nothing is as you think it is, and that´s a really important thing for me to know if I´m going to be reporting on this for probably the rest of my life."


What are the biggest challenges of reporting on the federal government right now for the Ottawa bureau?

"Access. There´s much less access to ideas and opinion-makers with this government than I´ve seen in previous governments. That obviously is something that is a strategy. It creates a level of fear within levels of the government and bureaucracy that makes it very difficult for a reporter to work on behalf of Canadians."


Are the Cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister´s Office accessible to your reporters on the Hill?

"I don´t know."


What do you think about the whole idea of the Prime Minister´s Office having control over the list of reporters´ questions?

"I know in Washington, for instance, there´s a protocol of who gets asked first, based on seniority. You know, I´m a journalist–I´m not happy whenever governments try to control questioning. I shouldn´t be happy about that. When I first came here, Trudeau was the prime minister. I´ve seen a lot of different governments, and things always ebb and flow over time. Messages are controlled, messages are less controlled–people attempt strategies, they measure them, if they work they stick with them, if they´re not working they´ll abandon them. Politicians are pragmatic. So I don´t know what the future brings. One of the things that an editor taught me was, never predict the future in journalism. Just measure today and look back with experience, and my experience tells me that there´s an ebb and flow to every administration. I don´t know, maybe it is [working for the Conservatives]. Maybe it brings a backlash. I don´t know what their polling says. I just know as a journalist, and on behalf of journalists, that we have a role and an obligation on behalf of Canadians to ask questions as aggressively and as often as we can."


Will the national news be doing more federal politics reporting now that it is broadcast from Ottawa?

"I don´t think so, no. The broadcast has to represent the interests of all Canadians, not only the people who are interested in politics. So I don´t expect the broadcast´s content to change much. I´m hoping that our access will improve and that our information might go a little deeper, but I wouldn´t expect this to become Don Newman´s kind of broadcast."


Should more national news shows be based in Ottawa?

"No, I think an anchor can be based anywhere now. For seven years, I was based in Vancouver and we were very successful. The reason that we´re here is because of the infrastructure of CanWest, because of the proximity to other places, and because I´m very happy in Ottawa. I really like the city and it feels like home, and I´m at that stage in my life where returning to home base is very comforting."


Any last words?

"I´m very happy to be back. My son was born here. My wife and I were here before we were married. Ottawa is a touchstone at four times in our lives–where we were engaged, where we were newlyweds, where we had our first child. It´s nice to be back in familiar territory."