Media Mania : Hundreds of Journalists Expected to Swarm Nixon Library Opening

Kevin Cartwright, the Nixon library’s harried director of public affairs, fished a fistful of pink phone message slips from his pocket.

With the dedication of the Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace fast approaching, he said, it hasn’t been easy keeping up with all the media phone calls.

“News people are coming from all over the country and all over the world,” he said, rushing off to a background interview for yet another story.

The already extensive media coverage of the Nixon library--a story in the Washington Post called it “a Disneyland for political junkies”--will peak with the dedication ceremony Thursday.

The day is shaping up to be the biggest Nixon media feeding frenzy since the 37th President of the United States flew out of Washington after resigning from office 16 years ago.

“NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw, who will interview Nixon in front of the simple white farmhouse where he was born, is among an estimated 400 journalists expected to descend upon the former farming community.

Early Thursday morning, television crews from as far away as Japan, England and West Germany will have cameras positioned atop the three-tiered platform set up in the library parking lot facing the blue-carpeted speaker’s stand.

The “CBS This Morning” show plans to air a 90-second pre-dedication story, followed later in the broadcast with a live interview from the library with former Nixon White House aide Alexander M. Haig by one of the program’s co-hosts, Harry Smith or Paula Zahn in New York.

On Thursday evening, ABC’s “Nightline” plans to focus on the Library dedication, with Barbara Walters filling in for vacationing Ted Koppel as host in New York and correspondent James Walker in Yorba Linda. That is, said a “Nightline” spokesman, “barring some other breaking news event.”

Battling for position on the media bleachers facing the speaker’s platform will be reporters from such diverse publications as the New York Times, the Korea Times, Time magazine and the Bakersfield Californian.

Joining the network heavyweights will be the usual contingent of local television news crews, which will even include the NBC affiliate in Portland, Me. Radio stations, including KNX, KFI, KYMS, KOCN and KIK-FM, will also do live remote broadcasts from the library. England’s BBC will be there.

Jay Mathews, the Washington Post’s Los Angeles bureau chief, will cover the dedication, paying particular attention to the former First Lady.

“Pat Nixon appearing in public after 10 years is certainly interesting,” he said, adding that he will be especially “attentive to what she says or does in public.”

Adding to the heavy media coverage will be the White House press corps, which is traveling with Bush.

The presence of President George Bush and former presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald R. Ford has only intensified the heated media interest in the dedication ceremony.

As Linda Ellman, West Coast producer of NBC’s “Nightly News,” put it: “It’s not every day you get to see a sitting President and three former presidents all in one place.”

But there’s no question who the real draw is.

“Nixon’s been in the public eye for so many years,” said Ellman. “People either love him or hate him. Certainly, there’s no lack of interest.”

Although CBS and ABC will have correspondents covering the event for their evening news programs Thursday, Brokaw is the only network news anchor who will be at the library.

“We also anchored the ‘Nightly News’ from the dedication of the Jimmy Carter library,” Brokaw said in a phone interview from New York. Chuckling, he added: “We have an evenhanded approach to these things.”

Anchoring the NBC evening news program from the Carter library dedication in 1986, Brokaw said, “worked so well we thought, the dog days of summer are here. . . . That (combined) with the man who has been both in triumph and tragedy a part of the American public life for six decades now” is why he will be anchoring the program from the Nixon library.

“However people feel about him,” Brokaw said, “he is an historical figure in darkness and in light.”

Brokaw, who covered the Nixon White House as a reporter, will tape an interview with Nixon Thursday afternoon to air later during his live “Nightly News” broadcast.

“It’s just time we take a look at Richard Nixon,” said Brokaw. “And it’s not going to be any kind of valentine or sweetheart deal, but neither are we coming out there just to paint the dark side.”

As the library dedication nears, the interest has intensified. A staff of six at the library has been handling more than 50 media phone calls a day, many of them requests for interviews with Hugh Hewitt, the library’s executive director.

“The crescendo, which is about middle C right now on the scale, began about 10 days ago,” said Hewitt, who spent most of Friday being interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic and the Washington Times.

According to Hewitt, there has been “tremendous interest overseas” by publications including the Sunday Times of London and the Zurich Times.

“We’ve gotten all sorts of interest from Asian media; phenomenal interest from Japan,” he said. “Nixon has tremendous standing in Asia. Always has. Their interest was probably the most predictable of all the international media.”

Requests for press credentials to cover the library dedication Thursday are being handled by members of the White House press advance office, who checked into the Anaheim Hilton and Towers late last week. The White House press corps will arrive with Bush late today.

A meeting room at the hotel has been outfitted with tables, chairs and 35 telephones to serve as a combination briefing room-filing center for the White House press corps, which typically numbers anywhere from 75 to 100 when the President travels domestically.

The White House press advance team will also arrange transportation--usually two or three buses--to take the White House correspondents to the dedication ceremony. Said the top advance team member, “Once they hit the ground, I take care of them.”

Equipment trucks from NBC News in Burbank are expected to arrive at the Nixon library today in order to run cables, set up cameras and test lights. Two 40-foot trailers stationed in the library parking lot will serve as an office and a tape editing room.

NBC will use two cameras for the live broadcast and two cameras for Brokaw’s interview with the former President.

“We’ll talk to him about what the library means to him and the six decades he’s been in the public eye,” said Ellman, adding that old news footage will accompany Nixon’s comments about the “joys and disappointments” of his career.

The other two television networks do not plan as extensive coverage of the dedication on their evening news programs.

ABC News White House correspondent Brit Hume will be traveling with President Bush to the ceremony.

“We are covering it,” said a spokesman for “World News Tonight With Peter Jennings,” “but as we now stand it’s hard to say what’s going to be on our 22 minutes of news that night. That’s not decided ahead.”

“For us it’s going to be very straightforward coverage,” said Jennifer Siebens, Los Angeles bureau manager for CBS News.

In addition to the two segments on “This Morning” on Thursday, she said, “my guess is we’ll be wrapping up the coverage with another piece Friday morning, kind of how it went, who was where and the whoop-de-do.”

As for how the dedication story will be played on the “CBS Evening News With Dan Rather,” she said: “Our White House folks (Lesley Stahl and Wyatt Andrews) will be out with Bush attending the ceremony. We have never made, to my recollection, a special effort for any presidential library. It’s handled in context with the major news of the day.

“It’s interesting, it’s historically significant, but it’s not, you know, the Second Coming.”