TV & VIDEO - July 2, 1987

Senior executives just write memos, right? Wrong. Three execs at NBC News now are temporarily on the “NBC Nightly News” writing staff, filling in for newswriters whose union, NABET, struck NBC on Monday. The temporaries, who have print or broadcast news backgrounds, are two vice presidents, Ed Planer and Tom Ross, and Gordon Manning, a former vice president still with NBC News as an executive consultant. Their chief editor: Joe Bartelme, who usually is NBC News’ national assignment editor, and who in the early 1970s was news director at NBC-owned KNBC-TV in Burbank.