Weekend Edition CBS News: The Best Newscast in Television
02 June 2009 | By Sonja in Media, SonjaOver the past two years, while being closely involved in both the Mitt Romney presidential campaign and the biggest initiative in the history of the U.S., California’s gay marriage issue, I have had an extraordinary opportunity to scrutinize and to be scrutinized by today’s local and national media. Brushing up against reporters and urgent deadlines hour after hour, my worst fears have been confirmed. Today’s local and national news is as much about what’s not being covered by ABC, NBC, CNN, FOX and others, as what is.
Having worked for virtually every news network in my career, and having been skewered by them all too, I have found the most objectively-produced and reported network newscast on the air today to be the Weekend Edition of CBS Evening News with Russ Mitchell. Some may be surprised by this review considering that Katie Couric’s CBS daily newscast remains stuck at the bottom of the ratings, and has not been particularly complimented.
Exactly my point.
The staffs of the weekday and the weekend newscasts are completely different, and actually have different motivations. Weekend newscasts are always more relaxed and usually under the radar of high-pressure ratings battles and consultants. Katie Couric must feel like the Captain of the Titanic. Since her second week at the helm as Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News, her ratings have been sinking. Weekend ratings are scarcely reported. As a result, you might have noticed yourself; weekend national newscasts seem to be more about “news”, and less about celebrity and point of view.
Russ Mitchell and his Executive Producer, Patricia Shevlin are the best of the field. I mean the entire field. Mitchell delivers the news beautifully and professionally. He doesn’t make you feel like HE is the story as Brian Williams often does. Mitchell doesn’t bleed with ambition or designer styling like Anderson Cooper on CNN He doesn’t confuse news and opinion like MSNBC’s Keith Olberman and others like him. Russ Mitchell also hails from one of the few really respected broadcast journalism programs in the country, the University of St. Louis. There is a common sense approach about his reporting at the anchor desk, and in the field, that reflects he was been well- taught.
Russ Mitchell brings professionalism to the front of the camera. Patricia Shevlin, a sharp, veteran producer for CBS News, makes sure there is professionalism behind the camera. The true test of an executive producer in TV News is how your own producers and correspondents regard your news judgment and management style. Melissa Sanborn, a top, no-nonsense West Coast producer for CBS News, volunteers that working on the Weekend Edition of CBS News and working for Patricia Shevlin is a privilege.
“Our newscast is sharp, credible and balanced because of her and the people she surrounds herself with. Our show is what it is because of the Executive Producer and everyone on the team likes working it .” Says Sanborn.
Patricia Shevlin produces a news show that resembles the hard, credible, and more balanced network newscasts of the 1970’s, which is when her network news career began. She has almost forty six years of experience watching and judging the daily news flow at CBS, and in America. It may well be her years of experience in news before the 80’s, when news changed from “credible” to “live,” that gives CBS Weekend News the class, and the straightforward new style that distinguishes it from others. Shevlin has sharpened her skills in almost every news department at CBS, including five years on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.
Behind the career, Shevlin’s network bio reveals that she was born in Cleveland. She graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in art history. She is married to Ted Holmes, another long-time CBS News producer, and they have two children.
What is missing in many television newsrooms in this era, is the kind of experience and eyes someone like Pat Shevlin offers. Pat Shevlin no doubt remembers what it was like to cut film, not video tape. To have only one news show a day to round-up the world’s news. Not one every half hour.
She has a gut instinct about what is real news and what isn’t.
And it shows.
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