Rough Draft: A Memoir

by Katy Tur

Their beat was someone else’s worst day.

I’d tell people about the fun stuff because it was real and we loved each other and that has to be known.

That anger was exactly what I’d been trying to forget.

Donald Trump insulted me on national TV, called me names on Twitter, and tried to make his campaign impossible to cover.

nothing beats television when the news is big and ugly and unfolding by the minute.

had run barefoot over blocks of cobblestone and I had made it. I was a Tur.

wanted what she wanted: a clearer picture, a better image.

It’s a little hard to imagine now, but journalism was a hot profession in 1978.

To borrow a line from an old magazine writer I know, journalism in the seventies was a “get laid” profession. And who doesn’t want to get laid?

To this day, when I feel the urge to push a little harder, go a little faster, risk a little more in pursuit of a story, it’s usually not my competition or my colleagues that I have in mind. It’s my father. Not that I’d endorse all his methods.

In 1980, CNN beamed its way into American homes and the phrase “breaking news” began its long, slow journey toward overuse and cliché.

as if the First Amendment guaranteed the press eternal life.

He was a self-taught expert at both getting the story and being the story.

A first draft of history and my family was in the middle of it. Journalism wasn’t just their identity. It was becoming my own.

remember grimacing at my parents’ helicopter as it crisscrossed the sky above my middle school. I thought they were spying on me.

That was him: always the hero; also the harm.

It was like a hot mic environment—always on, always recording, someone always listening.

no such thing as having it all in those days.

Was it so important to tell their news clients before they told their daughter?

in between the stories, when everything was quiet, and his own thoughts would sneak in.

I knew something was more wrong than usual when they showed up at my college graduation separately and didn’t sit together.

“I’ve never seen you more confident than when you were lying to that officer,” he told me.

it was also an odd kind of privilege to be awake and sober in the hours before dawn, working, witnessing New York as few people do.

Local news is all about tragedies.

When people were nice, I’d worry it was some sort of trap. I didn’t trust their motives.

The problem was the world: sexist, misogynistic, and gross.

the best hair advice comes from balding older men.

Journalism is the world’s best career for avoiding your own problems.

Because the story is always still unfolding.

I intended to be on a big, fat ripe tomato of a tour around Sicily with my scooter-riding French boyfriend.

this interview was Donald Trump in full: inaccurate, bullying, and shameless.

It all sounded so… not normal. I loved the not-normal-ness.

My problem is not that people are rude. It’s that people are empathetic and interested. They want to know more. But I just don’t want to get into it.

I liked the guy, but I wasn’t going to give up my shot.

CBS, the network with the richest tradition in writing—and

subtle enough to not outshine anything else I might end up wearing by night’s end.

between the Trump inauguration and Tony’s work at CBS, we still had almost no furniture.

I’d known since our fifth date.

Caption: Breaking News.

I want to look like myself and I want our coverage to keep you interested.

The struggle, as we moved into Trump’s presidency, was the reality that fair meant we had to note that the president said incorrect things, a lot. More than past presidents. It was daily.

Journalism is a public service, but the journalism industry is a business. If you look away, the business fails and the service withers with it.

viewership was consistently over a million people. That’s a lot of people.

More people than ever were watching or reading the news. But fewer people than ever were trusting it.

I knew that the invite was not exactly a sign of good times in dear old America.

They’re epic failures, and what’s remarkable about them today is the extent to which they have either been forgotten or misremembered by the general public. And we haven’t even gotten to some of Cronkite’s everyday coverage as managing editor of the CBS Evening News.

the truly momentous stuff of the past year can be hard to pick out from the merely dramatic.

from the moment I knew I was pregnant, journalism became something even more vital, even more essential, and even more personal. Not just a safeguard for the future but a safeguard for my future. My children’s future.

We as a country couldn’t agree on whether the sky was blue, the grass was green, or water was wet.

This would chafe some people, but Trump rally-goers are not some people.