Marty Levin

Dialogue with Tom Blair

A COMMANDING PRESENCE on San Diego television for three decades, Marty Levin may be the city’s most-trusted anchorman. A veteran of all three of San Diego’s original network affiliates, channels 8, 10 and 7/39 (where he’s been the anchorman for 20 years), he’s collected more than a dozen Emmys and three Golden Mikes. Along the way, he’s covered everything from national political conventions to national pennant races. Meanwhile, he’s also earned a reputation as one of San Diego’s most-dependable contributors of time and energy to scores of charitable organizations. He and his wife, Gail, live in University City. They’re parents of a son, J.T., a recent graduate of the University of Missouri journalism school.

TOM BLAIR: You must be the ranking news anchor in San Diego after . . . how many years is it now?

MARTY LEVINE: I came here in the summer of 1977.

TB: Well, you took a little timeout when you joined the big boys in Washington, D.C., during the 1980s. You didn’t like it much, did you?

ML: From 1980 through the end of ’82, I was in Washington at the NBC owned-and-operated station. And no, I really didn’t like Washington very much. First, the weather is thoroughly awful. If you’re from New York, the pace of Washington seems like nothing. If you’ve been living in California, it seems completely insane. I just didn’t see that as being the best lifestyle for me.

TB: So were you an anchor or reporter?

ML: Both. But I gave up the job in Washington without the promise of a job here. I just decided it was worth it for the way I like to live my life.

TB: Who were your role models? Did you watch certain anchormen and think, Wow, this would be great?

ML: No, I got into it completely by accident. I started in radio news, and it was very hard to earn a living. So I became a disc jockey in Eugene, Oregon, for a while. And that paid for school. But I didn’t have the talent to be a disc jockey for the rest of my life, so I went back to radio news. Then there was a part-time job open at a TV station there, and I had the credentials from radio.

TB: Did you have a journalism education?

ML: No. I did the high school newspaper and yearbook. College newspaper. College radio station. So television seemed natural. Of course, it was a bit less complicated in those days. Basically, the guy who took me around showed me how to do one machine a day for a week, and then he left.

TB: So, once you were in it, did you look at other newscasters and model yourself after them?

ML: I don’t know that I modeled myself after anybody, but my heroes were Harry Reasoner at ABC. And certainly, David Brinkley, whom I got to work with in Washington. But I always liked Harry Reasoner. He had a wry sense of humor and just enough cynicism that you could tell he was a guy who knew what was going on.

TB: This won’t be a surprise question: In 35 years, what’s gotten better in TV news, and what’s gotten worse? Or is it some of both?

ML: Some of both. The technology is far better, but nobody really knows what’s going to happen next. We’re wedged between cable and the Internet, and everybody’s scrambling and has this vision it’s going to be the Internet, but nobody’s sure about it——how to make money, how to staff it. So everybody’s putting a lot of effort into the Internet, but nobody quite has the model yet. But in TV, digital is better; high-definition is better.

TB: The picture side of TV is better. And the content side?

ML: Is not better.

TB: You want to elaborate?

ML: Sure. Something on the order of 85 percent of the news that appears either on television or online is gathered by some man or woman at a local newspaper. Then somebody reads the paper or the Web site and they have [contracts] and they upload it. The problem is, everybody’s reading the same material. Doesn’t matter if it’s from Google or Yahoo or MSN, it originated at a Eugene Register-Guard or a San Diego Union-Tribune. It’s the gathering part that’s most expensive, and the gathering part is suffering most from this technology. It’s great that I can read what somebody in Philadelphia wrote about a story, but there’s still somebody at the Enquirer there who had to go get the news. So with the loss of the Los Angeles Times’ San Diego edition and The Tribune ——and then, of course, they’ve culled the Union-Tribune down to a smaller staff——fewer and fewer people are actually gathering the news and then disseminating it.

TB: You’ve been at the top of your game for a long time——an especially long time in the TV news game. How do you explain your success and longevity?

ML: Well, I never thought it would happen. When I started, this was a business where if the ratings dipped a little bit, they went and got another 30-year-old to do it. But the audience has gotten older, and they’ve let a lot of anchors age with them. The other thing, maybe I’m most proud of, is that——despite hate mail and complaints and emails and telephone calls——most people aren’t sure what side of any issue I’m on. That’s been a very intentional thing. When we used to televise the 90-minute town hall meetings, Third Thursdays, it was comforting that people from both sides of the issue would come up to me to complain.

TB: Also, male anchors do tend to have a longer shelf life than female anchors. A little gray in the hair, or a few crow’s feet and worry lines, seem to enhance an anchorman’s trust factor. That doesn’t work so well for women. Is there a double standard?

ML: There always has been a bit of a double standard. But if you look at Susan Taylor, who I work with——she was here in 1980 at Channel 8. Carol LeBeau was here around that same time. There are women here who’ve been around for a very long time, though it’s not the rule.

TB: Do you ever get the sense you’ve seen and done it all before——that every local tale has been told, and we’re all just recycling the same old stories?

ML: Yeah. Absolutely. There are always a few exceptions, but they’re so extreme and usually unpleasant that you don’t want to go, “Oh, boy. I hope this happens again.” But it’s very rare to have something come along now that we or I haven’t done before.

TB: So you must be longing for a juicy new scandal once in a while.

ML: Oh, yeah. Especially here, where the scandals seem relatively petty.

TB: Although they’re getting bigger——when the city’s on the verge of bankruptcy, that’s bigger.

ML: It is. But in Chicago, if you do an interview with a politician, and you don’t just beat up on him, you lose your job. In San Diego, if you’re not polite to a politician, you might lose your job. You know, people who come from Chicago think, “Couldn’t one of the city councilmen just take a good, decent bribe and get something done?”

TB: Well, we did have a congressman who did that.

ML: We did. He set a new standard.

TB: Does it frustrate you, sometimes, that TV news can’t very often go deep into a news story? That you’re limited to two or three minutes to cover a story that might run two or three columns in the newspaper, or two or three pages in a magazine?

ML: It’s very frustrating. If you back up to the time I started in television, there was a mandate from the Federal Communications Commission about serving the public interest. But we ended up like the airlines, deregulated. And while there are still standards, it’s much more important now to do stories that have a commercial appeal to an audience.

TB: What about the flip side? What does TV news still do better than the print media?

ML: Show you the pictures. And frankly, whether it’s a house on fire or brush fire or——this goes back a ways——Richard Nixon resigning, you can’t top television. The Internet’s trying, but there’s something about looking right at the television and seeing the pictures and getting the sense of actually being a part of it that you can’t get anywhere else.

TB: You’ve worked with some of the biggest hitters in local news——broadcast and print——over more than three decades. Who makes your hall of fame?

ML: Ken Kramer. Gene Cubbison. And they’ve both been around. Cathy Clark, Harold Keen, Ray Wilson.

TB: The old Channel 8 news director.

ML: Yes. Ray would see a kid editing like crazy, making a story look pretty——but running late——and Ray’s line was “If it’s not on the air, it’s not art.” And then there’s Joe McMahon——unbelievably solid. Hal Clement; he’s a terrific writer. Adrienne Alpert.

TB: One key to your own success may be your high visibility away from the anchor desk. You don’t just punch the clock and go home at night. Both you and your wife, Gail, have devoted an extraordinary amount of time and energy to local charitable works——particularly with the Alzheimer’s Association. Is there a personal reason for that affiliation?

ML: We love old people. And old people love me, for some reason. I’m big in the grandmother set. I’ve almost always done pretty much anything anybody wanted——if the groups were legitimate. I think I’ve only missed one event by being sick, and another, for United Way, I had to leave to go cover Patty Hearst’s release from prison——and Jack White filled in the rest of that night for me.

TB: The news business is constantly evolving. The old way of doing things is always vulnerable to change. Radio threatened newspapers; television threatened radio; now, many feel, the Internet may be the death knell for TV news. Most news organizations, yours and mine included, now have a Web presence. Do you think we’re enhancing our products, or are we competing with ourselves?

ML: That’s one of the great mysteries. The Union-Tribune now has guys out shooting video for the Web site. Some of the TV stations are taking stuff from amateurs and putting it on with a catchy little name. I don’t think anybody quite understands what’s going to happen, so they’re all trying. It’s like “I’ve got to be in this club until I find out if they want me for a member.” But to those of us who’ve been serious about this business all along, there’s a matter of making reasoned editorial decisions. The whole point is to put it in some sort of perspective. To just have the information flying around [on the Internet] does not guarantee any perspective at all.

TB: What’s the toughest, or most important, story you’ve ever covered in San Diego?

ML: If I think about San Diego, three stories come back to me: the PSA crash, the McDonald’s massacre and the fires three years ago.

TB: Those are tough stories to cover. The plane crash was devastating for many of the people who covered it.

ML: And I ended up covering a second plane crash in Washington. An Air Florida plane went into the Potomac River in winter. So I ended up doing two of those in a relatively short period of time. It was a little more than my nervous system really needed. As for the other stories, look at the issues we talked about in the ’70s in San Diego, and see how many either were or weren’t dealt with. Remember back then we were saying, “If this keeps up, our freeways are going to be busy.” You can tell a lot about a town by the number of traffic reports they need to have.

TB: What’s the biggest story none of us in the local news game is covering right now?

ML: Our natural resources. We were just in the middle of a nasty heat wave recently, and 50,000 people were without power. And then they were talking about rolling blackouts. Also, if we don’t have an incredibly wet winter, they’re going to ration water. Not to mention more fires. With all the growth that’s gone on, we really haven’t provided the infrastructure we should have.

TB: Okay, we all know you don’t stay at the top of your game for 35 years without being a pro. But we all make mistakes. What’s the worst on-air gaffe you ever made?

ML: That goes back to my time in Washington. For a bunch of reasons, over which I had no control, I was the one told to go on the air and report that Mayor Marion Barry had been shot——when, in fact, he had not. It was all a hoax. But it got picked up from us by the national news. It got out everywhere. Even in doing the follow-up calls, I’m talking to the trauma unit at Washington Medical Center, and they’re telling me they’re waiting for him to be helicoptered in. It was only coincidental that I happened to be the anchorman who was in the newsroom at the time. Of course, Marion Barry just raised hell with me. It wasn’t pretty.

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