Review of ““And So It Goes”: Adventures in Television” by Linda Ellerbee

The Stuff:

This is a memoir/autobiography by American journalist Linda Ellerbee, covering her years in television up till the mid-80s. She describes her times as a Washington correspondent for NBC and an anchor on a late-news magazine program called Overnight, among other things.

She discusses little of her private life but focuses on the professional. Amusing and irreverent little vignettes fill the narrative. The opening lines set the tone for much of what follows:

I wouldn’t mind writing one of those books about the good old days—how I went out into the land and committed journalism, covering the important stories, every one of them, everywhere, better than anyone—but the thing about lying is that unless you’re a political candidate or a network vice president, you’ve got to set yourself some limits and hold fast.

She further states that the book isn’t about television news.

“All I mean to do here is to tell a few good stories.”

Thoughts:

This is the first of Ellerbee’s three memoirs/autobiographies. It takes place before she contracted breast cancer and became a patient advocate. She is about forty at the end of the book.

Ellerbee confesses to mistakes, some of which are amusing in themselves, even if she suffers rather drastic consequences for them. One that stands out early in the book is what she refers to as “the Letter.”

In 1972, the Dallas AP where she worked had just purchased some spiffy new word-processing equipment. Ellerbee wrote a “chatty” letter to a friend that contained juicy gossip. She did NOT hit “send,” which would have sent the potentially libelous letter out over the AP network. She printed it out to mail to her friend. However, she did not erase it but sent it to a holding queue.

The next morning, AP showed off its spiffy new word-processing equipment to people from NASA and other places. Someone saw her letter ready to send and sent it out over the AP network.

“I was fired,” Ellerbee writes, “only because the AP legal department told them it was absolutely against the law to shoot me no matter how good an idea it might be.”

What arises from these stories, however, is a profoundly cynical worldview. Ellerbee admits she got into journalism because, alone and with two children to care for, she needed money. There was no “calling,” per se. Needing money is a powerful motivator, IMHO, particularly if you have children depending on you. That doesn’t mean you view your job with any less professionalism.

Some of her stories are great. The book is entertaining. I wish it left me feeling a little less like I’d read a noir novel, however.




Title: “And So It Goes”: Adventures in Television
Author: Linda Ellerbee
First published: 1986