Out of the public eye - Bryant Gumbel - Cover Story - Interview

Diverse - Fairfax, VA, USA - For fifteen years, Bryant Charles Gumbel was a part of America's morning ritual. As the co-host of NBC's Today Show, he would meet you at the morning breakfast table, wide-eyed and brimming with the new day's headlines and trivia, which he delivered with his easy smile, sharp intellect, and quirky wit.

He was the first African American broadcaster to co-host a nationally televised morning show, proving to skeptics that Americans could, indeed, embrace the idea of receiving their morning dose of news and chitchat from a Black man.

In 1997, Gumbel ended his quarter-century association with NBC to explore other opportunities. Now forty-nine, he is the principal partner of CBS EYEMARK, the syndication company of CBS Inc., which aims to produce primetime specials for the network, among other projects. Though his most recent show, Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel, was canceled earlier this summer, he appears undaunted about the future.

The day Black Issues Executive Editor Cheryl D. Fields came to interview Gumbel at his CBS office in Manhattan, the soulfully robust voice of Patti LaBelle wafted in the background. Surrounded by books, dozens of teddy bears, and golf paraphernalia, among other memorabilia, this multiple Emmy-Award-winning broadcaster talked about the current state of broadcast journalism, the status of Blacks in higher education, and the terrain he has covered since graduating from Bates College with a liberal arts degree in 1970. The following is excerpted from that conversation:

From where you sit, where are we in terms of diversity in the news business?

Not very well off, and I say that on two counts. Numerically, [African Americans] clearly not as well represented as either we should be or as anybody hoped we would be by this time. But also in a larger and, perhaps, more troubling context, I wonder to what extent this has something to do with the nature of the business.