He's one of the nation's most recognizable reporters, having been the White House correspondent for ABC and the creator of Fox News Channel's celebrated Washington bureau. But Brit Hume never considered journalism until he was starving for work.
"I had no inkling I was going to be a journalist," the folksy Hume revealed. After graduating from college in 1965 with an English degree, he was married, with a child on the way, and living in his mother-in-law's Hartford, Conn., home. He was trying to get a job as an English teacher when an employment agency suggested newspapers.
A slot at the Hartford Times came open, and "I snapped it up because I had to have work." Stepping into the newsroom, he added, "I knew I was home."
His personal story is one of several videos offered up by Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution as part of a monumental effort to reconnect with some 450 Washington reporters a generation after Hess first interviewed them 33 years ago.
Hess' Internet-based video project is called "Journalism in Retrospect: The Washington Reporters," and there is even an accompanying book coming out titled "Whatever Happened to the Washington Reporters, 1978-2012." "Journalism in Retrospect" is a nine-part video interview series on the Brookings website and will include such subjects as Steven Roberts, Nina Totenberg and Linda Greenhouse.
Hess told Secrets he is donating the hundreds of interviews conducted for the project to the Library of Congress, which will eventually make them available to the public.
