Written by 4 journalists who covered that fateful time in history, with a foreword by Dan Rather. This was a truly fascinating look on so many levels at not only the Kennedy assassination, but also the shooting of Lee Oswald and the aftermath of that, all from the perspective of the newsmen. All this was the beginning of live news coverage on the still young medium of tv. All without cable, internet, none of the state-of-the-art technology we take for granted in this day and age. Hard to imagine it was only 50 some years ago. It feels like we have come lightyears in technology since then, and we have. Each of the 4 journalists, Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer, George Phenix and Wes Wise, wrote chapters on their personal positions and involvement. They talked about how they used hand-held 16mm film cameras (no video yet, back then).

From Mercer: "No Satellites for instant reporting from the scene. Take a film camera, shoot the story, run it back to the newsroom, have it processed,, write the story, and time its phrases with a stopwatch to fit the film's shots to the copy. Often you'd edit the film yourself, measuring the length of each shot to fit the number of seconds called for by the narrative. As you cut the pieces that would make the story, you stuck them temporarily to the edge of the editing table, then glued them together -- as fast as possible if you were racing to the deadline."

"The homicide offices were down the hall from our camera, and I stretched a microphone cable the length of the building as close to the wall as possible from the south end to the north, where everyone congregated. As the evening progressed, that cable and I were all over the place...Just after I'd taken my appointed spot at the end of the building where the actors in this drama would be coming and going, an extremely wide-bodied person with a number of still cameras draped over his torso approached me and asked what that cable on the floor was. I explained the production plan , and he told me that if the cable got in his way he would yank it out. I replied that if he did that I would bring my foot-long microphone down on his head. Shortly after that our six-foot plus engineer, Howard Chamberlain, ambled up and asked if there was a problem. I assured him there was no problem, now. This was seat-of-the-pants television reporting. There was no director, except Leigh Webb in our van outside...."

from Wes Wise: "...I sped the five blocks to the television station. As we went, I was unloading the film from the camera, and when we arrived I ran in and handed it to Henk, who put it in the soup. In a few minutes the ten o'clock news was underway...You never know how a film shot under considerable duress will turn out., but I sat down at my Smith-Corona and made an outline with the bare facts of what had happened. When the film emerged from the huge developing machine, I took it from Henk and threaded it, still damp, into the little hand-cranked viewer for editing. 'Wow!'....I rushed the unedited film to the television control room and told the projectionist to put it on the first available projector. Then I ran down the single flight of stairs two steps at a time, raced into the studio, and slipped the barest of outlines to Warren at the news desk."

Honestly, there are so many more quotes I could include here but you get the picture. Technology might make our lives easier in countless ways but those guys were on the cutting edge of history in the making and that they managed to pull it off with the primitive and clunky equipment they had at their disposal, is nothing short of miraculous. I was just about to turn 10 when those days in 1963 were unfolding in our living rooms, but I can remember watching and taking it all in with my parents, as if it were yesterday. I have had a fascination with this time in history ever since. This book was a very good read (published in 2004). ( )

Those of us of a certain age (or a range of certain ages) are accustomed to the question "where were you when Kennedy was shot?" or "...when you heard that Kennedy had been shot". I was in my 8th grade English class, and I still puzzle over the decision by the school administration to open the public address system and plug the radio broadcasts into it. My school was a K-12 building, but I assume the news was not piped into the elementary classrooms. We were a pretty unsophisticated bunch, but the possibility of nuclear attack had been on our minds for several years by this time, and the horror of the event seemed somehow to fit into my world view at the tender age of not-quite-12. Upon reflection now, it is quite apparent that the news reporting of the assassination and its aftermath was entirely unlike anything that might happen in the 21st century. Not just from a technical standpoint, but politically, philosophically and ethically, the world of journalism has changed monumentally in the last 50 years. This book is a collection of re-views of what it was like to be on the scene from 4 men whose job it was to cover the President's visit to Dallas, and who ended up reporting explosive events at a critical moment in history without a template or precedent to guide them. I found it fascinating.
Review written December 2013 ( )

This book is authored by four men who were right there when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The were covering his visit to the city and soon found themselves in the middle of reporting the tragedy and its aftermath. They each tell where they were assigned, what they saw and reported beginning on that Friday morning of November 22, 1963. They were at Love Field, downtown Dallas, Parkland Hospital, the Trade Mart, the Dallas Jail and some of them were present when Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald on Sunday morning. It is interesting to read about not only their views of the situation, but the equipment and facilities they were using. They describe the impact of the mass of journalists that converged in Dallas from all over the world. The reader is given an inside glimpse of what it was like to cover this tragic and sad event.

The authors describe being questioned by the FBI, Secret Service and the Warren Commission. They reported the trial of Jack Ruby with one of the authors being called by both the prosecution and the defense. The book closes with each author giving brief comments on changes to journalism over the past 50 years and their opinions of those changes.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read more about what happened in Dallas on that November day. It gives a view not given in most books on the subject. ( )

Most people in my generation remember the answer to the question: “Where were you when JFK was assassinated?” For many of us who are still around 50 years after the event, those memories are vivid. I recall being dismissed early from school that Friday and rushing home to watch the unprecedented news coverage on our small black and white TV. On Sunday afternoon, I watched the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald broadcast live! The 50th anniversary edition of When the News Went Live chronicles those events from the reporter’s perspective. This is not about conspiracy theories, the Camelot mystique, or the internecine strife between the Kennedy and Johnson camps. It is about the transformation that took place in broadcast news in the matter of one weekend.
Living in the age of CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, etc., it seems odd that there was ever a time when there was not wall to wall news coverage. The events in Dallas in November 1963 forced the major networks to reinvent broadcast news. The networks had no connected infrastructure to provide continuous reports on the events as they unfolded that weekend. Networks relied heavily upon local affiliates and newspaper reporters for information. TV coverage was hampered by the bulkiness of cameras and the necessity of cables and cords. It would not be wrong to say that those events caused the major networks to reconsider how news would be gathered and reported in the future.
One interesting note is that none of the contributors to this volume spoke favorably about the 24 hour news networks. Instead of providing a consistently helpful service, these former newsmen feel that news becomes trivialized in these situations. After all, they wonder, are there enough engaging and newsworthy events to fuel 24 hour news?
When the News Went Live takes us inside the nuts and bolts of news coverage 50 years ago. The nation grieved, but to provide us with the coverage of this historic moment, these people had no time to grieve with the rest of the nation. ( )

This rather slim book of 198 pages delivers what was promised as to the main characters involved in the Kennedy assasination. Almost two thirds of the book deals with the actions of the reporters who actually covered the assassination story. I learned some new details I was not aware of previously. I would recommend reading this book, but would advise skimming over some of the unnecessary details of each reporter's life story. ( )