“20/20” reporter Lynn Sherr remembers when she was told by a New York editor, “We don’t hire girls.”
She’s no TV-blond-come-lately. She started chasing news with The Associated Press after graduating from Wellesley College and spent several years with PBS stations before landing at ABC News in 1977. She has covered women’s issues, health and social change for “20/20” since 1986.
She tells all about it in her new book, “Outside the Box: A Memoir,” which she’ll discuss at a luncheon of The Denver Forum on Friday at the Oxford Hotel.
She wrote the book for a lot of reasons, she says, mainly “for the kids who come into my office and ask, ‘How do I get your job?”‘
It’s also about her life in the news business and the struggle women had getting established. “I’ve lived through such wondrous times, I don’t want these things to get lost.”
Sherr’s all for CBS anchor Katie Couric and women in the biz but there’s an overriding concern, too. “I think it’s great that there’s a woman anchoring the evening news, even if it took 50 years for it to happen.” But, she warns, “It’s not about gender. We’re all scrambling to hold on to the audience.”
She’s concerned too by trends in television news. “What we’re developing is a generation of individuals who like to hear themselves scream. They care more about hearing themselves than about facts (and) some are masquerading as news programming. I’m very old school. It should be right down the middle.”
Details on Sherr’s appearance with The Denver Forum are available at 303-832-9030.
aving it all
What would you do in Denver?
Courtney Hansen, host of the adventure program “Destination Wild,” covers the city from ground to sky Tuesday (7 p.m., FSN Rocky Mountain).
She hurtles down a mountainside with national mountain bike champion Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, takes a hot-air balloon ride over Denver/ Boulder, dines at Buckhorn Exchange, hits the bars in LoDo, tours Coors Field and gets a massage in Cherry Creek. All in 30 minutes.
Let me check. Yes, I’ve done one of those things.
“Destination Wild” returns Jan. 23 for a show from Telluride.
Around the dial
“Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride,” a documentary about the bizarre life and times of journalist/author Hunter S. Thompson and those celebrities who knew him, premieres at 8 p.m. Tuesday on Starz. … Former KDVR-Channel 31 anchor Pamela Davis is the new news director for KACT-Channel 8 in Aurora. … KVOD 90.1-FM airs Handel’s “Messiah” with the Colorado Symphony at 7 p.m. Christmas Eve. … Quotable: “The TV business is uglier than most things.” Hunter S. Thompson
Dick Kreck’s column appears Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1456 or dkreck@denverpost.com.
