Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt

Last year I had the pleasure of meeting Baltimore native and former CBS News Foreign Correspondent Tom Fenton. After autographing my copy of his book "Bad News", Fenton encouraged me to continue to hold onto my dream of becoming a television news correspondent. He told me to take a foreign language, and learn about the history of the world. He said that I as an African American man had a good shot of maybe one day reporting from overseas. Some of my former teachers, and some of my friends have insisted that if I ever do achieve my dream, to think twice about going overseas. So when I heard about ABC's Bob Woodruff and his colleague Doug Vogt, I thought what if we were to fast forward 10 years. What if I ever had to report from a war zone?

As an aspiring journalist and a certifiable "news junkie" I have carefully watched the last several weeks of ABC's World News Tonight, as Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas took over as the lead anchors for one of America's oldest broadcast networks. It's a job which some consider glamorous, luxurious even, but it's also a job which requires a great amount of work. The journalists who we see on screen, and those who work behind the scenes are nothing if they don't desire to report accurately important news stories from around the nation, and around the world. The job of the anchor, is to quite literally be an anchor, and hold us steady as the news they report is sometimes enough to quite literally rock our worlds. I think Tom Brokaw said it best when he said of his time spent in the anchor chair, "I am simply the most conspicuous part of a large, thoroughly dedicated and professional staff that extends from just behind these cameras, across this country and around the world, in too many instances, in places of grave danger and personal hardship."

I respect so much the sacrifice made by Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt. I respect the tremendous amount of dedication, their desire to get the story right, and the discipline they showed through constantly striving to uphold the ideals espoused by Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and the other journalists who have worked to maintain the relevance of broadcast news.

Below is an article that Lee Woodruff, Bob's wife wrote about her husband's work, when he was still a foreign correspondent:
http://www4.colgate.edu/scene/may2002/lee_woodruff.html

My thoughts and prayers are with Bob Woodruff, Doug Vogt, their families, the men and women of ABC News, and my fellow members of the journalistic community. I hope you'll join me in praying for them too.