HAPPY TALK Confessions of a TV Newsman<i> by Fred Graham (W.W. Norton: $19.95; 352 pp.) </i>

Those who nightly watched Fred Graham, former legal-affairs reporter for CBS news, during the Watergate era know him as a thorough newsman with a knack for explaining complicated issues in down-to-earth terms.

Those who read the first chapter of his memoirs will also know him as a very funny writer. His description of the behind-the-scenes insanity at a local TV station in Nashville, where he was a news anchor after CBS failed to renew his contract, is a riot. It’s also poignant--Graham relays the anguish of a man once near the pinnacle of his profession as he tries to fit into a rag-tag “Happy Talk” operation.

It’s a shame that after that great first chapter he suddenly makes a shift into a choppy style that resembles news-bite journalism. Stories about his interesting early careers as a lawyer and New York Times writer are told in snippets intercut with scenes from his childhood or college days. The effect is more confusing than revelatory. One wishes he had paid heed to what Bill Small, one of his former CBS bosses, told him when his on-air style was getting too fancy: “Just tell the news.”

He does relate some juicy tales from inside CBS, including some about the cutthroat competition among reporters. And about two-thirds through the book he picks up steam as he writes about the changes at CBS news--severe cutbacks and the onset of the “infotainment” news style he calls “happy talk”--that rocked that organization. There have been other books on the subject, but Graham provides the viewpoint of someone who was on the inside and saw careers and lives, including his own, drastically changed.

Near the end of the book, he takes us back to Nashville for a fascinating look at local TV news. Without belittling his co-workers or the form, he explains in the best tradition of Graham reporting how “happy talk” works and why it didn’t work for him.