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| Name | Joan Didion |
|---|---|
| Caption | Didion at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival |
| Birthdate | December 05, 1934 |
| Birthplace | Sacramento, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist, Memoirist, Essayist |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1963–present |
| Subject | Memoir, Drama |
| Notableworks | Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) |
| Spouse | John Gregory Dunne (1932-2003; his death at 71) |
Joan Didion (born December 5, 1934) is an American author best known for her novels and personalized, journalistic essays. The disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos upon which her essays comment are explored more fully in her novels, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work.
As a child, Didion went to kindergarten and first grade; however, as a direct result of her father's involvement in World War II in the Army Air Corps, she did not attend school on a regular basis because of her family's constant relocation. It was not until the age of nine or ten that her family stopped moving around, settling back in Sacramento in 1943 or early 1944. During this time, her father went to Detroit to settle defense contracts for World War I and II. Didion states that moving as often as her family did had a profound influence on her, claiming that she often felt like a perpetual outsider. Didion later used these experiences when writing her 2003 memoir Where I Was From.
With her husband, Didion has also co-written a number of screenplays, including the screen adaptation of her novel Play It As It Lays and Up Close & Personal.
The White Album, a collection of journalistic essays from her time at Life, Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books, was published June 17, 1979 by Simon & Schuster. It is said to function as a sort of follow-up to Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Play It As It Lays, set in Hollywood, was published in 1970 and A Book of Common Prayer was published in 1977. Her 1983 essay, Salvador, was written after a two-week long trip to El Salvador with her husband. She also wrote Democracy in 1984 which deals with her concern for the loss of society's traditional values. Her 1987 nonfiction book, Miami, looked at the Cuban expatriate community in Miami. In 1992, she published After Henry, a collection of twelve geographical essays. In 1996, she published The Last Thing He Wanted, a romantic thriller.
Didion began writing The Year of Magical Thinking on October 4, 2004, and finished 88 days later on New Year's Eve. She went on a book tour following the release of this memoir, doing many readings and interviews to promote it. She has said that she found the process very "therapeutic" during her period of mourning.
In 2006, Everyman's Library published We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, a compendium of much of Didion's writing, including the full content of her first seven published nonfiction books Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Salvador, Miami, After Henry, Political Fictions, and Where I Was From, with an introduction by her contemporary, the noted critic John Leonard.
In 2007, she began working on a one-woman adaptation of The Year of Magical Thinking. Produced by Scott Rudin, this Broadway play featured Vanessa Redgrave. Although at first she was hesitant about the idea of writing a play, she has since found this new genre to be quite exciting. However, Didion is no longer working on that project.
In the autumn of 2011, Knopf will publish a new memoir about aging by Joan Didion called Blue Nights.
In the title essay of The White Album, Didion documents a nervous breakdown she experienced in the summer of 1968. After undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, she is diagnosed as having had an attack of vertigo and nausea.
In December 2003, in the midst of dealing with their only daughter's life-threatening illness, Dunne suffered a fatal heart attack one night while at the dinner table. At the time of her father's sudden death, Quintana Roo Dunne was in the ICU with pneumonia, which subsequently put her into septic shock and a coma. Didion put off Dunne's funeral arrangements for approximately a month until her daughter was well enough to attend the service; however, it was not long before tragedy struck Joan Didion once again. Her daughter collapsed from a massive hematoma after deboarding a plane at LAX. She required six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center. As of 2005, Didion has resided in an apartment on East 71st Street in New York City. New Journalist writers tend to turn away from “just the facts” and focus more upon the dialogue of the situation and the scenarios that the author may have experienced. The style gives the author more creative freedom and blends elements of fiction, opinion, and fact. This can help to represent the truth and reality through the author's eyes. Exhibiting subjectivity is a major theme in New Journalism. Here, the author’s voice is critical to a reader forming opinions and thoughts concerning the work.
Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem exemplifies much of what New Journalism represents as they explore the cultural values and experiences of American life in the 1960s. Didion includes her personal feelings and memories in this first person narrative, describing the chaos of individuals and the way in which they perceive the world. Here Didion rejects conventional journalism, and instead prefers to create a subjective approach to essays, a style that is her own.
Because of her belief that it is the media that tells us how to live, Joan Didion has become an observer of journalists themselves.
In 2009, Didion was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Harvard University.
Category:1934 births Category:Living people Category:American essayists Category:American journalists Category:American novelists Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Category:People from Sacramento, California Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Prix Médicis essai winners Category:National Book Award winners
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| Name | Tom Brokaw |
|---|---|
| Caption | Brokaw in 2007 |
| Birthname | Thomas John Brokaw |
| Birth date | February 06, 1940 |
| Birth place | Webster, South Dakota, U.S. |
| Education | Degree in politics and journalism from University of South Dakota |
| Occupation | Television journalist/Author |
| Years active | 1966–present |
| Gender | male |
| Status | married |
| Title | | family = |
| Spouse | Meredith Lynn Auld |
| Children | Jennifer JeanAndrea SimonSara Auld |
| Credits | Today co-anchor(1976–1981)NBC Nightly News anchor(1982–2004)NBC News Special Correspondent(2004–present)Meet the Press moderator(2008) |
Thomas John "Tom" Brokaw (; born February 6, 1940) is an American television journalist and author best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. He is the author of The Greatest Generation (1998) and other books and the recipient of numerous awards and honors. He is the only person to host all three major NBC News programs: The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and, briefly, Meet the Press. He currently serves as a Special Correspondent for NBC News and works on documentaries for other outlets.
Brokaw's father was a construction foreman for the Army Corps of Engineers. He worked at the Black Hills Ordnance Depot (BHOD) and helped construct Fort Randall Dam; his job often required the family to resettle during Brokaw's early childhood. The Brokaws lived for short periods in Bristol, Igloo (the small residential community of the BHOD), and Pickstown, before settling in Yankton, where Brokaw attended high school.
He has been married to Meredith Lynn Auld (a former Miss South Dakota and author) since 1962. They have three daughters, Jennifer Jean, Andrea Brooks and Sara Auld.
On April 5, 1982, Brokaw began co-anchoring NBC Nightly News from New York with Roger Mudd in Washington. After a year, NBC News president Reuven Frank concluded that the dual-anchor program was not working and selected Brokaw to be sole anchor. The NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw commenced on September 5, 1983.
Most of these events covered like the Challenger disaster, EDSA Revolution, Loma Prieta earthquake, fall of the Berlin Wall and Hurricane Andrew were among the works of a newscaster.
As anchor, Brokaw conducted the first one-on-one American television interviews with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was the only network anchor in Berlin when the Berlin Wall fell. He and Katie Couric hosted a prime-time newsmagazine, Now, that aired from 1993–94 before being folded into the multi-night Dateline NBC program.
before an interview on 2 June 2000.]] On September 11, 2001, Brokaw joined Katie Couric and Matt Lauer around 9:30 a.m., following the live attack on the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and continued to anchor all day, until after midnight. Following collapse of the second tower, Brokaw observed:
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He continued to anchor coverage to midnight on the following two days. Later that month, a letter containing anthrax was addressed to him as part of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Brokaw was not harmed, but two NBC News employees were infected.
In 2002, NBC announced that Brokaw would retire as anchor of the NBC Nightly News following the 2004 Presidential election, to be succeeded by Brian Williams. Brokaw would remain with NBC News in a part-time capacity through 2014, serving as an analyst and anchoring and producing documentary programs.
Brokaw closed his final Nightly News broadcast in front of 15.7 million viewers on NBC on December 1, 2004, by saying:
By the end of his time as Nightly News anchor, Brokaw was regarded as the most popular news personality in the United States. Nightly News had moved into first place in the Nielsen ratings in late 1996 and held onto the spot for the remainder of Brokaw's tenure on the program, placing him ahead of ABC's Peter Jennings and World News Tonight and CBS's Dan Rather and the CBS Evening News
.]] Along with Jennings and Rather, Brokaw helped usher in the era of the TV news anchor as lavishly compensated, globe-trotting star in the 1980s. The magnitude of a news event could be measured by whether Brokaw and his counterparts on the other two networks showed up on the scene. Brokaw's retirement in December 2004, followed by Rather's ouster from the CBS Evening News in March 2005 and Jennings's death in August 2005, brought that era to a close.
On June 13, 2008, Brokaw broke into NBC programming to announce the death of NBC News Washington Bureau Chief and Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert. A week later, NBC announced that Brokaw would serve as host of Meet the Press on an interim basis. He was succeeded by David Gregory in December 2008.
Brokaw serves on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the International Rescue Committee. He is also a member of the Howard University School of Communications Board of Visitors and a trustee of the University of South Dakota, the Norton Simon Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the International Rescue Committee. He also provides the voiceover for a University of Iowa advertisement that airs on television during Iowa Hawkeyes athletic events.
Category:1940 births Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American television news anchors Category:American television reporters and correspondents Category:American broadcasters of Irish descent Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:Living people Category:Television news anchors in Los Angeles, California Category:NBC News Category:University of Iowa alumni Category:People from Day County, South Dakota Category:University of South Dakota alumni
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| Name | Katie Couric |
|---|---|
| Caption | Couric in August 2010 |
| Birthname | Katherine Anne Couric |
| Birth date | January 07, 1957 |
| Birth place | Arlington, Virginia, U.S. |
| Marital status | Widow |
| Education | University of Virginia |
| Occupation | Television journalist |
| Years active | 1984–present |
| Spouse | Jay Monahan (1989–1998) |
| Children | Elinor Tully "Ellie" MonahanCaroline Couric Monahan |
| Salary | $14,000,000 |
| Credits | The Today Show Dateline NBC CBS Evening News 60 Minutes @katiecouric |
Couric attended Arlington, Virginia public schools: Jamestown Elementary, Williamsburg Junior High, and Yorktown High School and was a cheerleader. As a high school student, she was an intern at Washington, DC all-news radio station WAVA. She enrolled at her father's alma mater, the University of Virginia, in 1975 and was a Delta Delta Delta sorority sister. Couric served in several positions at UVA's award-winning daily newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. During her third year at UVA, Couric was chosen to live as Head Resident of The Lawn, the heart of Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village. She graduated in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in English with a focus on American Studies.
Couric made her first broadcast as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric on September 5, 2006. The program featured a new set, new graphics, and a new theme (composed by prolific movie score composer James Horner, and featuring a voice over from Walter Cronkite). It was the first evening newscast to be simulcast live on the Internet and local radio stations.
CBS had heavily hyped Couric's arrival at the network, hoping to revive the evening news format, but there were suggestions that it had backfired. Although there was much interest during her first week as anchor, CBS Evening News has remained a distant third in viewership, behind ABC World News and NBC Nightly News. While Couric improved over Bob Schieffer, ABC's Charles Gibson has since been widening World News' lead over Evening News.
The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric has won the 2008 and 2009 Edward R. Murrow Award for best newscast. On March 29, 2009, Couric was awarded with the Emmy Governor’s Award for her broadcasting career.
She has interviewed the likes of President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, John Edwards just after their announcement that Mrs. Edwards' cancer had returned, Israeli Foreign Prime Minister Tzipi Livni, Norah Jones and Michael J. Fox.
Couric led CBS News' coverage of the 2008 Presidential election and anchored live for five hours on election night. Couric was the first network anchor on the ground in Port au Prince after the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. After the BP oil spill Couric anchored from the Gulf Coast weekly and brought much attention to the disaster.
Couric was the only solo female evening news anchor in the United States, until December 21, 2009, when she was joined by Diane Sawyer, who succeeded the retiring Charles Gibson for ABC World News. Couric and Sawyer were previous rivals as the hosts of Today and Good Morning America, respectively.
Her first guest was the popular and controversial Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck. Subsequent interviews have included former Vice President Al Gore, actor Hugh Jackman, recording artist Shakira, First Lady Michelle Obama, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, and teen singer Justin Bieber.
Katie Couric's televised colon cancer awareness campaign was temporarily associated with an increase in colonoscopy use in 2 different data sets. This illustrates the possibility that a well-known individual can draw attention and support to worthwhile causes.
She also was very active in the National Hockey League's Hockey Fights Cancer campaign, appearing in some public service announcements and doing voice-overs for several others. Couric is currently a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for the United States.
On October 7, 2005, Couric broadcast her own mammogram on the Today show, in the hopes of recreating the "Couric Effect" around the issue of breast cancer. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Her sister Emily Couric, a Virginia Democratic state senator, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 54 on October 18, 2001. Couric gave a eulogy at the funeral. She pointed out that it irritated Emily when people asked her if she was Katie Couric's sister. She told the mourners "I just want you to know I will always be proud to say 'I am Emily Couric's sister'." Couric has two other siblings, Clara Couric Bachelor and John M. Couric Jr.
Couric was the honored guest at the 2004 Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation fall gala. As the Guest of Honor for the inaugural American Cancer Society Discovery Ball, Couric was recognized for her leadership in increasing cancer awareness and screening.
Category:American Presbyterians Category:American television news anchors Category:Daytime Emmy Award winners Category:Women journalists Category:Peabody Award winners Category:People from Arlington, Virginia Category:University of Virginia alumni Category:Yorktown High School (Virginia) alumni Category:60 Minutes correspondents Category:NBC News Category:American television reporters and correspondents Category:1957 births Category:Living people Category:American women journalists Category:American people of French descent Category:American people of German descent
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| Name | Dominick Dunne |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Dominick John Dunne |
| Birth date | October 29, 1925 |
| Birth place | Hartford, Connecticut |
| Death date | August 26, 2009 |
| Death place | Manhattan, New York |
| Resting place coordinates | |
| Spouse | Ellen Beatriz Griffin (1954–1965) |
Dominick John Dunne (October 29, 1925 – August 26, 2009) was an American writer and investigative journalist, whose subjects frequently hinged on the ways in which high society interacts with the judicial system. He was a movie producer in Hollywood and was also known for his frequent appearances on television. He was the brother of author John Gregory Dunne; the writer Joan Didion was his sister-in-law. He was the father of Alexander Dunne, and of the actors Griffin Dunne and Dominique Dunne, as well as two daughters who died in infancy.
On what would have been Dunne's 84th birthday, Hollywood friends, along with new Hollywood figures, and some reporter friends gathered at the Chateau Marmont to celebrate Dominick Dunne's life.
In November 1982, his daughter, Dominique Dunne, best known for her part in the film Poltergeist, was murdered. Dunne attended the trial of John Thomas Sweeney, her murderer, who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served 6 and a half years, counting pre-trial incarceration time. Dominick Dunne wrote the article "Justice: A Father's Account of the Trial of his Daughter's Killer" for Vanity Fair.
Dunne went on to write for Vanity Fair regularly, and fictionalized several real-life events, such as the murders of Alfred Bloomingdale's mistress Vicki Morgan and banking heir William Woodward, Jr., in several best-selling books. He eventually hosted the TV series Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justice on CourtTV (later truTV), in which he discussed justice and injustice and their intersection with celebrities. Famous trials he covered included those of O.J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow, Michael Skakel, William Kennedy Smith, and the Menendez brothers. Dunne's account of the Menendez trial, "Nightmare on Elm Drive," was selected by The Library of America for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime writing, published in 2008.
In 2005, California Congressman Gary Condit won an undisclosed amount of money and an apology from Dunne, who had earlier implicated him in the disappearance of Chandra Levy, an intern from his U.S. House of Representatives district, with whom he had been carrying on an affair. In November 2006, he was sued again by Condit for comments made about the former politician on Larry King Live on CNN, but the suit was eventually dismissed.
While rumored in early 2006 that he intended to cease writing for Vanity Fair, Dunne stated the opposite in a February 4, 2006, interview with talk show host Larry King. "Oh, I am at Vanity Fair. I'll be in the next issue and the issue after that. We went through, you know, a difficult period. That happens in long relationships and, you know, you either work your way through them or you get a divorce. And I didn't want a divorce and we've worked our way through and Graydon and I are close and he's a great editor and I'm thrilled to be there."
Dunne frequently socialized with, wrote about, and was photographed with celebrities. A Salon.com review of his memoir, The Way We Lived Then, recounted how Dunne appeared at a wedding reception for Dennis Hopper. Sean Elder, the author of the review, wrote: "But in the midst of it all there was one man who was getting what ceramic artist Ron Nagle would call 'the full cheese,' one guy everyone gravitated toward and paid obeisance to." That individual was Dunne, who mixed easily with artists, actors and writers present at the function. The final line of the review about Dunne quoted Dennis Hopper wishing he "had a picture of myself with Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer."
In 2008, at age 82, Dunne traveled from New York to Las Vegas to cover O.J. Simpson's trial on charges of kidnapping and armed robbery for Vanity Fair magazine, claiming it would be his last. During the trial, an unidentified woman approached and kissed him, causing her to be ejected from the courtroom. Later, when he collapsed from the sudden onset of severe pain and had to be rushed to the hospital, he expressed amazement at how fast the word spread at his fan site, DominicksDiary.com.
Dunne's adventures in Hollywood as an outcast, top-selling author and reporter, were catalogued in the release of . This film documents his successes and tribulations as a big name in the entertainment industry. In the film, Dunne reflects on his past as a World War II veteran, falling in love and raising a family, his climb and fall as a Hollywood producer, and his comeback as a writer.
In September 2008, Dunne disclosed his treatment for bladder cancer. He was working on Too Much Money, his final book, at the time of his death. On September 22, 2008, Dunne complained of intense pain, and was taken by ambulance to Valley Hospital. Dunne died on August 26, 2009, at his home in Manhattan. However, news coverage of his death was overshadowed by that of Ted Kennedy, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, who had died the day before.
Vanity Fair magazine paid tribute to Dunne's life and extensive contributions to the magazine in its November, 2009, issue.
Category:1925 births Category:2009 deaths Category:American film producers Category:American legal writers Category:American memoirists Category:American novelists Category:Writers from Connecticut Category:Writers from New York Category:Cancer deaths in New York Category:Deaths from bladder cancer Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:People from West Hartford, Connecticut Category:Williams College alumni Category:American military personnel of World War II
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