Gwenda Blair

story @ Jessica Savitch anchorwoman's rise to the top + fall

In 1979, Newsweek dubbed her the Golden Girl. Blond, beautiful, immensely popular with the public, Jessica Savitch had it all. A network anchor at thirty-one, sha had made it to the top in a male-dominated world of big stars, big money, and super-egos. But behind the scenes was another story - a woman desperately chasing her dream through a private nightmare of drugs, depression, and disastrous romances and spiraling ever downward - sad victim of her own relentless ambition, and the fast and fickle industry that created her.… (altro)

Cocaine, Suicides, abusive sex, abortions, lesbianism, amphetamines, disposable marriages. Such was not the life of some self-destructive rock star, but rather the portrayal of Jessica Savitch. Unfortunately the Savitch family did not cooperate with Blair, so much of the gosspi remains unattributed, undocumented, and unexamined. Blair, who wrote a column for Mademoiselle, is more successful in tracing the rise and fall of Savitch's career and the distorted values of the television news world. Blair argues that Savitch was trained and prized only for her on-camera charisma. When she landed a job at NBC in 1977, she was assigned to the Senate, a beat for which she had neither the background nor the disposition to cover adequately. She was eventually consigned to the "NBC News Digest" which usually required her to read only a minute of someone else's copy from a teleprompter.

He career came to a sudden end during a rainstorm when her date drove off the road into a canal. Not three weeks earlier she had rambled incoherently through a 43 second spot on the news.… (altro)