Today's afternoon editorial meeting was one of those rare occasions.  Let me put it this way: President Ford had no detractors at this meeting.  Everyone was in a contemplative mood -- the conversation centered around our coverage, and making sure we have the very best elements needed to tell his uniquely American story. 

Along the way there were fragments of conversation about him -- the first President, to my knowledge, to model clothing (along with his future wife) for compensation, and also on the sartorial front, the last President to wear a three-piece suit.  He was certainly the only President to live (for a short time) in a townhouse in Alexandria -- where the Fords remained while the Nixons' possessions were being emptied out of the residence portion of the White House.  One morning, the President left his home in Alexandria for the White House and a reporter asked him what he was carrying.  He famously answered, "some shoe trees and my high school annual!"  He clearly believed in piecemeal moving.

While I posted some reminiscences late last night that appeared below early this morning, the day

has been dominated by thoughts and discussions of the President and his Presidency. One of my prized possessions here in my New York office (which I showed to my co-workers today) is a photo by David Hume Kennerly of Ford and his beloved dog, Liberty, inscribed to me by the President. I thought of Justice John Paul Stevens, Ford's appointment to the Supreme Court. Today I again researched President Ford's military experience, from the transcript of one of my interviews with him: 47 months in the Navy, most of it on board the combat aircraft carrier Monterey, CBL-26. He had the job of assistant navigator, and for a time the Monterey was attached to Halsey's task force. He was officer of the deck in general quarters, and once during a typhoon he slid across the flight deck and was saved only by hanging on to the narrow steel lip at the edge of the deck. Knowing his Captain would not have turned around for one sailor overboard, he later told me, "I thanked the Good Lord. He took good care of me." He certainly did. Last night I went through my collection of letters that I'd received from him over the past few years, many of them handwritten. I counted my blessings for being fortunate enough in life to have known such a man in the small way that I did. I think the one word I've heard most often today is "decent." When spoken in the context of Jerry Ford, it is high praise indeed.

Tonight we'll devote the majority of the broadcast to President Ford and his memory, and we will have a lot of help remembering him: Andrea Mitchell will be with us, so will Tom Brokaw (NBC's White House correspondent back then, who went on to find steady work), and we'll hear from Ford's personal photographer David Kennerly...and a host of others.  President Ford lived to a ripe old age. "Those were good innings," as a friend of mine put it today.  Indeed they were. His death is a milestone in American life, just as his was a uniquely American life. 

We hope you can join us for what we think will be a special broadcast tonight.

The phone rang at my home last night with the bad news from California. I was told that moments after I hung up, it would be announced officially that President Gerald Ford had died.

Our news division, along with all others, print and broadcast, had been prepared for this news for some time. And it is during these times that our roles merge: as humans and as journalists, we are so often pulled in different directions. My daughter came into our bedroom and said "I'm sorry about President Ford," sweetly noting that I had gotten to know the former President late in life. Moments later I was asked to contribute to MSNBC's live coverage, speaking via telephone.

It was one of those many occasions when duty must come before contemplation or any personal sense of sadness. I thought about the last time I saw him, I thought about the afternoon a few years ago when he called me at home to thank me for a note I'd sent him. I thought about how he told our travelling crew during an interview in Palm Springs that he and Mrs. Ford were loyal Nightly News viewers, who "often watched on TV tables sitting there in front of the tube." I thought about a wonderful evening we had spent together at the Truman Presidential library, and how I'd discovered a picture of the two of us in a recently-published book.

I also thought about two friends of mine who knew him well: Tom Brokaw, who had been White House correspondent during his administration, and Andrea Mitchell, who by dint of her marriage to Chairman Greenspan and her career as a journalist had spent so much time around him, and admired him so.

The truth is Jerry Ford was a nice man. He was decent, courageous, honest...and a loving and faithful partner to his wife, a wonderful and trail-blazing woman. By today's political standards he just might be a liberal. By today's standards he is an anachronism of a kind of cooperative, deal-making and dare I say much more bipartisan brand of politics.                

I keep coming back to the word courage -- from his World War II service in the Pacific to the decisions he made as President to the way he so forthrightly dealt with the challenges that life handed him. He also managed to form a friendship with the man who defeated him in what became a bitter fight: Jimmy Carter.

Jerry Ford did it all in the classic style of his generation -- with modesty and with a self-effacing manner. What a historic role he played: from his unorthodox elevation first to Vice President and then President, where he was handed the wounds of a nation that needed urgent attention and healing. Political junkies will long ponder the following political footnote: had the talks with Reagan succeeded, had the ticket been elected to the "co-Presidency" that was briefly flirted with, our politics and the Presidency would be vastly different today. 
                                                    
He was, first and foremost, a man of the House -- whose loftiest goal in life was to become Speaker someday. As one journalist put it last night, upon hearing the news: "He was an ordinary guy in the noblest sense of the word ordinary."

Think about that for a while, while we all think about President Ford's lasting impact on the nation he loved. We are thinking of his family, and while this news changes some of our plans a bit, we will devote much of our broadcast to him tonight. We'll see you then.

It was the most profound eulogy any of us had ever heard.  One morning in 1993, Dr. Frank Stanton stood in the well of the auditorium of the Museum of Broadcasting in New York, having lost his best friend, former CBS News President Dick Salant.  Dr. Stanton was, at age 85, lean and stout, impeccably dressed, his white hair slicked back as it always was.  The weathered and carved features of his face were contorted in sadness as he looked up from his text and explained to the gathered mourners, with a single phrase, the impact of Dick's death on his life: "In my sadness, I yield to no one."

It was, in a way that was painful to watch, classic Stanton: sincere, austere, terse, and quite perfect. It could not be challenged.
 

Frank Stanton boarded a shuttle flight back to his home in Boston that day, and erased another number from the dwindling list of friends, contemporaries and contacts in his address book.

When I first went to work for CBS in New York, I opened a fresh box of letterhead stationery for my desk, and discovered what I was sure was a flaw: a single dot, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, had been printed onto every sheet of paper. I remember noting that the dots, when stacked upon each other, sheet upon sheet in the box, had formed a mound of their own, as large as that of the luxurious raised lettering that adorned the top of the page. I showed it to our newsroom secretary and was immediately corrected.  "Oh, that's Dr. Stanton's dot," she said.  She went on to explain that Dr. Stanton, who had commissioned the design of the iconic CBS eye logo, was so fastidious about how all outgoing correspondence should look...that he had the dot printed on each piece of letterhead so that CBS secretaries would know exactly where to place the first letter of the first word of each and every piece of outgoing CBS correspondence.  Dr. Stanton, who once taught a high school class in typography, wanted every piece of paper that flowed from his company to adhere to an exact standard.  That dot was its own spot-on depiction of Frank Stanton.

By now, readers of the standard Stanton obituary know the story of how he came to be hired by Mr. Paley's then-fledgling Columbia Broadcasting System.  Using a combination of a small motor, wax paper and a needle, Stanton had created a "black box" in the early days of radio, that scratched out a record of each participating listener's habits, based on the travels of the tuning knob during a given period of days. It was simple, brilliant...and the first measurement device ever invented in an industry that is today dominated by ratings.

He left Ohio for New York the day after he completed his doctoral dissertation. He arrived in New York to begin a $55-a-week job in the two-man research department at CBS.

My own association with Frank Stanton began late in his life, some time after that day at the Museum of Television and Radio.  I started writing him, mostly about my memories of Dick Salant, and he kindly wrote me back with his.  A few years ago, while engaged in my own rather strange hobby -- listening to the hundreds of hours of recorded telephone conversations of President Lyndon Johnson -- I discovered Stanton's voice on many of them.  I arranged for the Johnson Presidential Library to ship a box of tapes and accompanying transcripts to Dr. Stanton's home in Boston.  He loved reliving the old conversations, even those that involved a lot of listening on Stanton's part -- when Johnson would launch into a rant about how he'd been wronged by CBS News. In return, Stanton sent me his entire file of correspondence with Johnson, beginning back when LBJ was a freshman Congressman from Texas. During my first visit to the LBJ ranch in Texas, I paused to notice a unique hand-made coffee table in the living room, inscribed as a gift to the President and First Lady from "Frank and Ruth" Stanton.

Along with its founder Bill Paley, Frank Stanton shaped the broadcasting industry by building CBS into a giant.  While his public image was one of strict order and tight control, the small circle of people he allowed "inside" knew better.  Frank Stanton, the precise Midwesterner in the gray flannel suit, proudly hung a Jackson Pollock on his office wall.  He drove around New York in a black 1952 Porsche, and later, a customized 1959 Thunderbird.  William Paley's biographer, Sally Bedell Smith, writes that Stanton often allowed himself the luxury of having his personal car sent ahead of him on various business trips, to allow him the chance to drive on the open road far from the New York City streets.  He even made sure the CBS Corporate Headquarters made a bold statement in itself: he commissioned architect Eero Saarinen, famous for the swooping, futuristic TWA Terminal at JFK, to create Black Rock, the gleaming landmark tower that today reminds passersby on New York's Sixth Avenue of the time when the networks reached toward a limitless sky.  Frank Stanton kept his private life private -- perhaps because that's where he kept all his paradoxes.

I had the chance to visit his empty Black Rock office just after his retirement from CBS.  It was a sad sight -- the depressions in the pile carpet where his desk and chairs once sat, the Dictaphone still mounted to the wall, the dust outlines where his art once hung.  His departure from the empire he helped to build was not a happy one.  He later famously said that CBS had become "just another company with dirty carpets."  Many of those who worked at CBS back then knew Frank Stanton was right...without having to look down at the carpets.  Today, we owe it to Dr. Stanton to look back with profound respect at all he created.

The man who came to New York with a PhD in psychology seemed to innately know what Americans wanted to watch on television.  He understood how people lived, and how government worked.  He defended the integrity of CBS News and built a monolith of the electronic age. Frank Stanton died on Christmas Day at the age of 98, leaving behind characteristically explicit instructions: no donations in his memory, and no memorial service.  The latter robs many of us of the opportunity to say that in our sadness, we yield to no one.

This is our last weekday pre-Christmas break broadcast. We have a ton of news for this time of year, and there are folks we ought to be thinking of tonight. A lot of them. Tonight we will take time to pay tribute to the thousands who have volunteered to defend the country, and who tonight are on post in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Korean DMZ. We will report on the thousands of people who spent the night at the airport in Denver. Some of them are just now coming to grips with the notion of spending Christmas in a Denver hotel room... instead of with loved ones as they had intended. And a sidebar PR question for the FAA: After 4,700 people spent the night in the airport terminal after a crippling blizzard, why was the first aircraft allowed to take off (an event covered live on both local news and  national cable news) a FedEx cargo wide body jet? I realize FedEx carries valuable goods and meaningful packages, especially this time of year, but aren't passengers -- human passengers -- the priority? Was it a too-linear reading of takeoff order or was there a good reason for it? Since the picture of the "first departure from DIA" was shown all over the world today, just asking...

Also in the news tonight: Today's dropped rape charges in the Duke case. Three cable news networks took the defense attorney's news conference live, and the language, dealing with sex acts and body parts, was unbelievable. I couldn't help but think of the daytime TV audience during what one of the attorneys almost comically went on to describe as "this wonderful season of the year." We'll have an update on the case tonight.

Also tonight: American losses in Iraq, and the President's visit to Walter Reed today. CNBC's Phil LeBeau, who reports on the automotive industry, will do the same for us tonight on a major milestone where the "Big Three" of Detroit are concerned. Also tonight, our Friday "Making a Difference" segment -- a very touching story of a Secret Santa who is secret no more.

I'll also close the broadcast tonight with a message provided me by a viewer.

As I write this, my office has been transformed into a gift-wrapping zone. And as I prepare to take some time off with my family, I want to wish all of you the very best this holiday season. Your time and attention -- and yes, even your scrutiny and criticism -- make this the best job imaginable. We couldn't do any of it without you, and I wish you a happy and safe holiday -- a Merry Christmas -- and it goes without saying: My very best wishes for a wonderful year ahead.

Picture your favorite people -- your partner, your parents, a kindly grandmother, a cute 3-year-old nephew, a brother or sister. And now picture them camping out for a second day on the floor of Denver's airport. Or napping in the departure lounge at O'Hare. All they want to do is get where they're going for Christmas. That's what's happening right now as weather makes a mess of the pre-Christmas travel plans across this country, and across the pond, where Heathrow is socked in, thanks to that strange "freezing fog" they get this time of year. We'll cover the prognosis and ramifications tonight. We'll also have the latest on the trouble Congressman Goode is in for something he said... and printed... and sent out. Lisa Myers has a special report on Iraq tonight, and we have a special segment on the definition of victory in Iraq -- a question we pose to some prominent thinkers. We'll look at the economy during this run-up to Christmas, and how's this for a tease: Bob Bazell has a look at a "big-boned" individual we'll be introduced to tonight.

ENOUGH ABOUT ME
Time magazine has taken some heat for its selection of "You" as Person of the Year." As you may know by now, their thrust is positive: that self-driven media, user-generated content has taken root and is the central theme in our culture these days. Some take a more negative view of this development, and see the risk to the collective that the incessant celebration of self could bring. When you sit down and actually compare it to just a few years ago, the use of the first person in the daily dialogue is truly striking. I came across this nugget in the current New York magazine: it's part of a pictorial featuring New Yorkers, who are stopped on the street and asked things like, "Tell me about your outfit." A young woman in a hat, scarf and coat answers:

"This coat is the epitome of me. I am never more myself than when I am wearing this coat. It's kind of fifties, and I consider my style more twenties, but there's just something about this coat. It's totally me."

Back to the point I was making: Why are people so tough to penetrate these days?

IN OTHER NEWS
Let's end on an up note, shall we?  At the annual NBC News holiday party which was held this year in the hallowed Studio 8H, the very cool and iconic home of Saturday Night Live, it started to occur to me that Christmas is coming. I've been working like a dog, with the added advantage of being sick as a dog. Those of us who truly love this business can actually get romantic about it (it helps to be Irish... it further helps to be on cold medication), and so the highlight of the evening was when a veteran fellow employee came up to me and offered the nicest sentiment. She happens to be part of the control room team that gets us on and off the air each night. She said that each night, while she is counting down to exactly 6:30:00 Eastern time (the three network newscasts keep time by the U.S. atomic clock and come on at precisely the same time each night), she often thinks to herself that there are only two other people in network news who are doing that very same thing... that very same 5-4-3-2-1 count, at that very moment, each night. I told her the same thought often occurs to me in my role, when the red light comes on atop the lens when we come on the air. We both agreed that we have great jobs and share a wonderful occupation. We have been blessed in life and there's nothing we'd rather do. While in the re-telling it borders on schmaltz, it was indeed a nice note to end the evening on, and it made the Christmas season arrive a little faster. And for those longing for what everyone describes as that "old" feeling during this time of year, the posts today by Les Kretman and Steve Majors, from the White House and New Orleans, respectively, remind us that the spirit is out there to be found... even in our business.

TO THE NEWSROOM
Since I've been writing this, the official flight delay at ORD (Chicago O'Hare) is now posted at 4 1/2 hours. As they say: if you're traveling, check with your carrier.  Even better, stay home and join us for our Thursday night broadcast. We're working hard to bring it to you.

Our day began with President Bush's appearance in a rare venue for a news conference: the Indian Treaty Room of the Old (Eisenhower) Executive Office Building. As a former White House intern who used to regularly conduct tours, I remember only some of the details of that room: its elaborate inlaid floor, and the desk drawer, which bears the signatures of American vice presidents going back many administrations. If memory serves, it was formerly the official office of the vice president, before the modern era when they moved to the West Wing. The end-of-year news conference was an interesting session, regardless of the setting. While the President put off some questions due to his upcoming strategy speech on Iraq, he answered plenty of them, and we have a lot of material to go over tonight. Kelly O'Donnell will have our report from the White House. Jim Miklaszewski will have a follow-up on the story about enlarging the military, and Tim Russert will look at the politics of all that is going on.

The weather is in the news tonight, as we need not tell you if you live in Denver. We will soon look at the videotape from our NBC station there, KUSA. This storm has already caused big problems with the Denver airport (the huge United hub) where any disruption is felt across the national grid. They are expecting 3 1/2 feet of snow just outside Boulder from this storm. It's a huge low pressure system, and so it's moving counter-clockwise over the Rockies -- and it looks strange to see weather moving from East to West across any part of the country.

Another weather-related story took a sad, grim turn this afternoon: the search effort for those two climbers atop Mount Hood has been called off -- we are awaiting the official statement. A lot of Americans have been watching this drama unfold for many days, and feel somehow invested in the search, and our thoughts and prayers go out to those families.

Dawn Fratangelo has what might be the most interesting piece in tonight's broadcast for millions of people. It's about the generation that while raising children is also caring for elderly parents. There was a lot of nodding going on in the editorial meeting this afternoon when Dawn ran through her reporting for us -- this is something a lot of us are living.

THE DEATH OF PRIVACY
This afternoon in a Midtown Manhattan department store, I saw a famous rock star and his wife Christmas shopping. So did a lot of other people. From a distance, I watched as many of their fellow shoppers slowly removed their cell phones from their pockets and purses -- and proceeded to take pictures of the couple, some from six feet away. Some faked phone calls, others were unabashed about it. It struck me while watching it all unfold that privacy, especially for the prominent in our society, is over. The invention of the cell phone camera, coupled with Web sites that solicit real-time celebrity sightings in cities like New York and Los Angeles, make for a terribly claustrophobic atmosphere -- in this case, for a couple trying to buy a Christmas gift. Sorry, no names or locations... I'm trying to give them a little privacy.

TO THE NEWSROOM
Off we go to put this all together for tonight. We hope you will join us for our Wednesday night broadcast.

We have a ton of important and compelling stories -- now it's down to ordering them. No sooner had I returned to my office after the editorial meeting, concerned about time allotments and a crowded broadcast rundown -- when I looked up at my television and saw white smoke coming from the top of Mount St. Helen's in Washington state. Can there please be no more news involving mountains in the Pacific Northwest? 

That brings us to one story we'll be covering tonight: the climbers. I've detected in my TV watching a real up-tick over the past 24 hours in the number of voices questioning such elaborate rescue efforts and the expenditure -- given the fact that three experienced men made a conscious decision to climb a dangerous mountain. It's a very dicey area where life and death is concerned. Tonight we'll touch on the cost, while largely leaving the debate over it to others.

We will also cover the over-the-counter pain reliever story, which is a big one. The products on the list are in 99% of American medicine cabinets, and while they are taken like candy by some, they are decidedly not -- and as we'll hear tonight, the FDA and manufacturers are concerned enough to warn us further that this is serious medicine. We'll update the increasing talk of a "surge" in Iraq (using more U.S. troops initially, the theory goes, in order to decrease the number of U.S. troops eventually), and the crime stats that are just out. We also will have an interesting update from New Orleans (I've been reading your e-mails) on both the everyday picture there, and a new post-Katrina dynamic that is straining the already-strained public health system.

THE FIRST LADY
We will tonight cover the revelation that Laura Bush had a skin cancer removed back in November -- which has been disclosed now, we're told, because she was "tired of wearing pant suits." It raises an interesting issue for discussion and debate: Who among us would like our medical records -- say nothing of each and every procedure, no matter how intimate -- disclosed publicly and dissected with graphics by experts and would-be experts on television and all other media? And yet, having said that: the reason why Betty Ford is among the undisputed great figures of the last several generations is her courage in all but singlehandedly destigmatizing substance abuse and breast cancer. Yes, there are vast differences here, but it underscores the constant conundrum of public life where privacy and medical issues are concerned. The first lady's health is the first lady's business... until it isn't. Meaning: disclosure of a medical condition in the public domain leads to massive media coverage, which leads to public awareness -- which inevitably leads to early detection and perhaps even a cure for some who otherwise wouldn't have been checked. Tony Snow was questioned rather thoroughly about the topic at today's White House briefing. We will briefly cover Mrs. Bush's procedure with Dr. Nancy Snyderman tonight.

IN THE NEWS
Entirely by accident, all of today's print stories that I've chosen to note happen to be from one place, for the second day in a row: The New York Times. It's not as if it's the only paper I read today, but there are several items worth noting. In the Metro section, an article about foster parents in New Jersey. (NYTimes.com login required for links.) Under a new policy, those families who agree to raise foster children will be given an album, or "life book" to fill with photos and memories, so that when the child grows up and finds a permanent home, they will have a better sense of who they are, what they looked like, how they developed... the story of their own childhood. If you'll forgive the personal reference, what made this story so meaningful and sentimental to me was the fact that this is exactly what my late sister did for the children she raised as a foster mother in New Jersey. She used to compile beautiful books filled with photos, stories -- elaborate hand-written accounts of how the children developed (baby's first word, first step, etc.) and when, family stories, outings and favorite outfits. No one told her to do it, she just did it. While she did not invent it, she may well have perfected it. And now it will be state policy for all foster parents... and children will be the better for it.

Now to the Op-Ed page. No one would have blamed readers of this morning's Times for getting back into bed, pulling up the covers and staying there for the next 10 years after reading the piece by nuclear physicist Peter Zimmerman, which featured this upbeat riff on a "The Smoky Bomb Threat:"

"A few breaths might easily be enough to sicken a victim, and in some cases to kill. A smoky bomb exploded in a packed arena or on a crowded street could kill dozens or hundreds. It would set off a radiological emergency of a kind not seen before in the United States, and the number of people requiring life support or palliative care until death would overwhelm the number of beds now available for treating victims of radiation. First responders dashing unprotected into the cloud from a smoky bomb might be among the worst wounded... Some of the steps involved with making a good smoky bomb from polonium would be dangerous for the terrorists involved, and might cost them their lives. That, unfortunately, no longer seems like a very high barrier."

Alrighty then. That nicely brings us to the next item, found in today's business section, under the headline: Finally, a Way to Catch a Flight Without Shedding Your Shoes. It's the work of the always-superb Joe Sharkey and it's about a new paid service... the Registered Traveler Program:

"Under the program, travelers who pay an annual fee and pass a federal background check receive biometrically encoded ID cards to use at special processing lanes at airports. While the traveler still has to pass through security, the special lane has a separate kiosk that verifies identity and, starting in January, will scan shoes, negating the need to take them off at the regular magnetometer."

The takeaway message? We haven't mastered airport security yet, not even close. We're still screening shoes, but this will be a PRIVATE shoe screening. What could be more luxurious than private shoe screening? It does lend credence to the notion, raised often by smart people (who have time to think of such lofty things during the time they spend in security lines), to treat security as a Marshall Plan. Have we made it known that the input from our best and brightest to solve a huge problem... would be welcome?

Finally, and I won't keep you much longer, today's twin obituaries -- Chris Hayward and Joseph Barbera -- both men were giants of the cartoon world. Both started out in jobs they knew they didn't belong in. And for the first time in memory, one obit referred in the text to another.

This is all a function of being unable to talk during the day, to save what little voice I have. Today it's all gone to the keyboard. I left it all on the field, as it were.

We hope you'll join us tonight for our Tuesday night broadcast.

Having started the day with no voice, I have spent much it in my office avoiding conversation and trying to coax a croak into enough of a noise to get me through a half hour of television. I felt awful when correspondent Janet Shamlian brought her very cute little daughter by my office for a visit earlier today: at that point in the day, I was making sounds audible only to whales -- and I'm afraid she left here wondering who the scary man was. I will make an azithromycin-and-tea-fueled attempt to get through the broadcast this evening, having come down with the same upper-respiratory thing that millions seem to be battling.

How we'll begin the broadcast is still a bit up in the air. We just exited the 2:30 editorial meeting, and the problem is not a shortage of stories. The sad discovery on Mount Hood is among the stories we'll cover. The search effort continues, and conditions today aren't quite what they were yesterday. Many family members spoke to the assembled media today, amid the backdrop of sadness and trepidation with each passing day. Just this past hour, the family of Kelly James has confirmed that it was indeed his body. The Vietnam-era Chinook helicopters we've been watching are still the workhorses of the Army and Army Reserve -- they all have a ton of miles and flying hours on them -- and while they've been retrofitted over the years (with new avionics, regular engine changes, etc.), those airframes are the originals. I flew on several in Iraq with Gen. Wayne Downing, U.S. Army, ret., who was able to point out the patched-up bullet holes in one Chinook's skin dating back to the Vietnam war. One Iraq-based Army Chinook I flew in still had a vintage canvas bag for shell casings from the door-mounted machine gun, bearing a stenciled date from the 1960s. In this case (and as is common in aviation), maintenance and upkeep often matter more than the age of the airframe -- as evidenced by the hard work those helicopters are doing, along with their Black Hawk brethren, in some nasty weather atop Mount Hood over these past few days... and in hostile, unforgiving places elsewhere on the planet.

Also tonight: a new Pentagon report on the Iraq war will (we know from an advance read) contain some "devastating" findings and facts. Jim Miklaszewski will have that report for us. Ron Allen will update us on the "era of good feelings" in the NBA -- the repository of fellowship, sportsmanship and holiday warmth. Oh... and heavy fines and a lot of cursing.

Kevin Corke has a story on what can often be the financial "underside" of this time of year -- when a lot of lower-income folks are forced to pay even more than they should just so they can afford to give gifts to their loved ones. And the aforementioned Janet Shamlian (she of the daughter with permanent emotional scars from her visit to the croaking anchorman's office), will have a piece on the musical tastes of the Baby Boom generation. If you guessed James Taylor and Elton John, you guessed correctly. And then some.

In our journalism watch: two superb page one stories in this morning's New York Times: one on an American prisoner held in Iraq, the other on the "wood boilers" that are fouling the air in New England (and other places) while providing heat cheaply (NYTimes.com login required for links). And my thanks to TIME magazine editor Rick Stengel for inviting me to author a reality check of sorts in this week's edition on their choice of "Person of the Year" and the current media landscape. We're also extremely grateful to the panel put together by the Baltimore Sun for the nice things they had to say about us in a review of various television network blogs. We work hard at it, and it means a lot to all of us who contribute.

We hope you will join us for our Monday night broadcast as we start another week.

Another jumble of important news stories -- many more than we have time for, and it makes the order a tricky equation.  The markets had another good day today as well.

It's been a rough go in the Pacific Northwest. Mission Ridge in Washington State recorded an overnight wind gust of 135 mph -- and SeaTac  airport in Seattle recorded its fourth highest wind gust ever.  The Weather Channel is running dramatic video from yesterday of what appears to be a 757 doing a go-around in an unstable landing attempt in what looks like freakish crosswinds. All of this weather is happening during a huge military search for three climbers.  We'll have reports on each tonight.

This was departure day for Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon -- full honors for the departing civilian chief of the military.  Watching the President-elect name him to the job just now on videotape...President Bush looks 20 years younger.  Producer Andy Franklin is suggesting we show tape of Rumsfeld's first farewell ceremony (after his first stint in the job) tonight for comparison. If there is time, we will.  We also have a wonderful story about this nation's combat veterans tonight.  Speaking of which, wasn't Bob Faw's story about the Christmas wreaths at Arlington just breathtaking on last night's broadcast?

Tonight we will check in on the not-based-in-reality world of Wall Street bonuses, and we will follow up on yesterday's good breast cancer news.  We have a great look at who we are as Americans, thanks to the census figures out today. And its friday, so that means a Making A Difference report...which tonight is about a person doing some very important work.

ABOUT THAT SONG...
I will have a word with my friend Gena Fitzgerald in Washington who has posted something I have written about as a potential longer feature in this space: the Daily Nightly...the song...by the Monkees.  The truth is, I wrote it long ago, and it was to be a featured post the day Hurricane Katrina hit.  Mother nature had other plans, a crisis intervened, and my writing is sitting in some computer file unread.  Gena beat me to it, fair and square.  Short of admitting to being a Monkees fan in the '60s, let me say this: back when we named this blog as a take-off on Nightly News (more of a "Daily News"-type newspaper theme...the Daily Nightly...OK, I'll stop) I knew full well about the song. As Monkees fans may remind us with a posting or two, there is an elaborate back story behind the song...and the irony is that it has to do with the news media.  I was once on a plane with someone who said they knew Michael Nesmith...they quoted him as saying he was aware of our blog and was fine with the title.  Nesmith, by the way, was the Monkee who was always in the knit hat -- who turned out to be arguably the best pure musician in the bunch.  His previous claim to fame in life had involved his mother, who, as a secretary invented what we now call Wite-out to correct typing errors.  Gena's posting now means a piece of journalism will have to die.  But it's OK...those interested in the derivation of "Daily Nightly" the song title can have at it on Google.  He who hesitates is lost...I'll blame it on Katrina, not Gena.

ABOUT LAST NIGHT

Now it can be told: the staff of NBC Nightly News gathered at Chelsea Piers in New York for a night of bowling. The photos tell just part of the story. Today I feel like I've used about half of the products advertised on Nightly News for aches and pains -- usually not associated with a 47-year-old man in otherwise good health. As I find each year in our family Thanksgiving football game (the annual "Passive Aggression Classic") there are sets of muscles we don't use in day-to-day life. Some of them I haven't used since I last suited up for a high school football game. I used them all last night, and they aren't letting me forget it. It was a blast. From Sean the Intern from Ohio who bowls with an open hand (he says the finger holes don't work with his unique ball delivery) to Sima from Graphics who had never bowled before -- to Billy Catalano whose matching monogrammed bag and ball I find so intimidating...it was a great night, shared with and by a great group of people. I felt pretty good about bowling a 129 until Jean Harper, on my own team, clocked a 134. I had concerns early on in the evening that I would bowl my age. It was also a useful reminder of an axiom in our society that we don't repeat nearly often enough: no one looks good in bowling shoes. It's one area in life where George Clooney has no advantage.

ABOUT THAT SECRET SANTA
If you read Barbara Raab's posting yesterday, then you know about our gift exchange.  What she didn't tell you is: a brand new U.S. Supreme Court gold ruler now graces the desk in my office.  It carries the official seal of the Court and, like the work of the Court, is a precise device.  Barbara is a non-practicing attorney and knows my love of all things Court-related, and since I had no idea there were such things as "Court-themed gifts," imagine my surprise. It was kismet and it was very kind.

BACK TO THE BROADCAST
As you can tell, the distractions of the holidays are creeping into our days about now...I'm happy to say that we currently have exactly one dog and two children visiting our third floor offices.  Interns are departing to resume their studies, offices are starting to empty as vacations and even shopping days off start to kick in. We will soldier on, and will gather in the newsroom in a short while to make sense of all of this and put it in narrative form.  We hope you can join us for our Friday broadcast, and we hope you have a happy and safe weekend. We'll see you on Monday.

Photos by M.L. Flynn
Image 1: From left, Lauren Fairbanks, Carol Eggers, Bryan Haynesworth, Bita Nikravesh, Sam Singal and Matthew Ryan.

Image 2: From left, Anne Thompson, Neal Meltzer, Elizabeth Wilner, Tom Dawson, Ginny Harris, Adaora Udoji, John Reiss and Ron Allen.

At the time of my post at this very same hour yesterday, there was a lot we didn't know -- and as far as we knew, control of the Senate was quite possibly in the balance.  While we now have more information, the latter technically remains true.  I'm happy to report that based on all the available information from official sources and others, Senator Johnson has passed through the darkest hours.  As I said on the air last night -- and this bears repeating -- our thoughts and prayers are with this public servant and his family as they face this challenge and enter into this fight.  While I just looked up at the TV and saw two people manipulating a plastic brain with a hinged top (to illustrate what happened to Senator Johnson) we're all trying to make clear that all of our coverage, at its root, is about a man in big medical trouble who may emerge from this a very lucky man indeed.

We also have an important health story tonight that represents the best possible news in the field of breast cancer in a long, long time.  Robert Bazell will have that for us.  There's a big military story, having to do with the guard and reserves and service in Iraq.  We'll update the search for the climbers in Oregon (now the U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division -- Bob Dole's old outfit -- is flying in to lend their expertise) with Correspondent George Lewis (and the weather there is worsening rapidly)...and we may yet commission a thing or two not on this list.  The top of the broadcast -- story order -- is absolutely anyone's guess at this point. We're about to sit down, gather around and prioritize and choose a lead story from among several viable candidates.

FROM THE PODIUM
I note that Tony Snow has publicly apologized to my friend and colleague David Gregory, our Chief White House Correspondent.  As I told David earlier this week, it has been tough (just as I imagine its been tough on him) to sit at home and watch various cable types leveling completely unfair accusations at David, a guy I admire and whose work I trust.  Perhaps Tony's classy act today will go a long way toward silencing that noise, and prompting others -- and by my count there are several others -- to consider doing the same.

TO THE NEWSROOM AND BEYOND
Now we will make sense of the day's budget of stories. We hope you will join us for our Thursday night broadcast. For those viewers in New York: you'd be well advised to stay off the streets of the City tonight.  We're having our annual Nightly News holiday gathering, at an undisclosed location.  We'll have an after-action report in this space tomorrow.  See you tonight.

I was sitting down to write today's post when Tim Russert called with a major piece of news out of Washington: Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota is hospitalized at George Washington University Hospital (which houses a superb trauma center) having suffered a stroke. Sen. Johnson is a young man, not quite yet 60, known to be in good shape. Given his political contacts with the South Dakota delegation, I called Tom Brokaw and shared the news and we all got working on it.  It goes without saying that our thoughts and prayers are with the senator and his family. That is first and foremost at this hour. There are also obvious political ramifications that play a potential role here: should the senator become incapacitated, the Republican Governor would appoint a successor under South Dakota law. That would put the Senate at 50-50 and tilt effective control to the Republicans under Vice President Cheney's role as tie-breaking vote. This is a big breaking story on so many levels, and we are all working it. Chip Reid is on it in Washington, and Tim Russert will be by my side on the air tonight here in New York. Right now on MSNBC, Bill Press is making a very important point: GWU Hospital has a world-class stroke unit and is full of top-flite professionals... that is what we should emphasize right now, until we learn more. We hope to have much more by airtime. (Editor's note: You can read the latest on Sen. Johnson's health here.)

Tim will also be with us tonight to debut our new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll numbers -- which, while embargoed for release, reach new benchmarks in the President's approve/disapprove category and his handling of the war. And while this breaking news above sends the top of our broadcast into some flux, we'll also cover Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld, President Bush's comments today, the search in Oregon (and the coming, collosally bad weather there), the front in Afghanistan, today's medical news, and our featured story about a shopping trend this holiday season.

So its back to work, back to the phones and we hope you will join us for our Wednesday night broadcast.

A Senior White House official told me earlier today the President's speech to the nation (laying out a new strategy in Iraq) will indeed now likely be in January. While this runs contrary to what I was told just yesterday, and while this official understands a lot could happen between now and then (exposing the President to the risk of having to "react" to external events), this official explained the White House would rather "get it (the speech) right... than just get it OUT." Given the voracity of the Washington press corps for a drumbeat/theme story -- the past few news cycles have been dominated by the President's "listening" to various experts and branches of government prior to whatever pronouncement is coming -- and that will likely continue.  On CNN (where Jack Cafferty just said "the DECIDER has decided not to decide until January..."), they just ran a large graphic headline saying "WAY FORWARD STALLED." And I note that on MSNBC is the on-screen graphic: SHOULD BUSH CONSIDER FORMING A BIPARTISAN WAR COUNCIL?" With Robert Gates now days away from taking over as SecDef, someone at our editorial meeting noted that Rumsfeld has given an interesting interview to Cal Thomas -- specifically his comments about the phrase "War on Terror." 

Our broadcast will likely begin with some combination of the White House and Iraq.  Among our other topics tonight: immigration, the Mt. Hood rescue mission, the "other fronts" in Afghanistan (we have some great reporting from Jim Maceda on top of what the New York Times published from the region yesterday) and as promised, a look at who's watching the various charities during this busy giving season.

TROPHY STRIFE
If you heard this next item on sports radio this morning on the way to work, and doubted its veracity, doubt no more. It's true. In an incident that may say as much about the glaring absence of common sense in our national airline security policies as any other of late, Troy Smith, the winner of this year's Heisman Trophy, was not allowed to take the trophy on board his flight home. He was forced to ship the Heisman. You'll hear more about this item on the air.

WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES
Whenever lightning struck the Coyote, Road Runner, Yosemite Sam or any other of the friends we grew up with, they would instantly dissolve into a pile of ashes. It's the cartoon way. Who can blame a generation of Americans for believing that the same thing happens in real life? Well, cut to today's Science Times section of the New York Times (NYTimes.com login required for link). A reader wrote the editor: "If a high-intensity lightning bolt hit someone, would the person's body turn to ash?"

Where to begin? 

The reply from C. Claiborne Ray of the Times debunks the "cartoon ash pile" theory of lightning strikes, and goes on to supply some interesting facts. There are about 70 lightning-related deaths each year, and only 1 in 10 lightning-strike victims survive a bolt out of the blue (and here we're not counting the kind that hit me the day I met my wife), and often victims are left with neurological problems. While a lightning bolt can blow the clothing off your body (insert your own material here), the most common cause of death in such incidents is cardiopulmonary arrest, and not burns (or, as the editor puts it in debunking another cartoon image, being "split in half"). Lightning-strike survivors, we're told, can be easily distracted and irritable, which tells me that about half of my co-workers must have some lightning-strike stories of their own to tell.

And with this discovery in this morning's paper, C. Claiborne Ray of the New York Times takes the title of Second-Best Name I've come across in the last 24 hours. Last night's PBS documentary about England's King Edward and Mrs. Simpson featured comments from Sir Peregrine Worthstone. No more calls, we have a winner.

As we return to the serious business of putting together a newscast, we hope you will join us for the Tuesday edition of the broadcast.