Sharing stories about those who made history

IT has become fashionable for television news journalists to write memoirs: notably, Ted Koppel, Tom Brokaw, Judy Woodruff, Dan Rather, Linda Ellerbee, Lesley Stahl and Sam Donaldson. Now comes “Talking Back” from Andrea Mitchell, who has been a correspondent for NBC’s “Nightly News” for three decades.

“Talking Back” should satisfy the curiosity of most news junkies, aspiring journalists and those who follow politics with the avidity of sports fans. Mitchell’s tenacious reporting has bedeviled various seekers and occupants of the White House, including Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. It was her questioning that resulted in a political firestorm on the 1992 presidential campaign trail when Hillary Rodham Clinton famously declared that she didn’t want to stay home and “bake cookies.”

Mitchell covered the Jonestown massacre in Guyana, the fall of the Berlin Wall and, more recently, Condoleezza Rice’s first forays abroad as secretary of state. And Mitchell’s long relationship with and 1997 marriage to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan has solidified her position among Washington’s social elite.

Mitchell opens “Talking Back” with memories of Virginia Clair, the only woman working in the newsroom of the Standard Star in New Rochelle, N.Y., when Mitchell was an inquiring 11-year-old reporter for her elementary school paper. The girl sensed that for women, journalism was a lonely vocation.

Her journalistic passion and determination (and sheer stubbornness) are apparent from her opening pages. Her first broadcast was on the Roosevelt School public address system. “To this day, I remember feeling nervous in front of that microphone when I said, ‘Good morning, boys and girls. This is Andrea Mitchell reporting from the principal’s office.’ ”

Forthrightness -- some might term it pushiness -- has proven to be a virtue for Mitchell. She also savors “the sheer joy of storytelling” and “being an eyewitness to history” and confesses to enjoying the guilty pleasure of hearing all the “rumor, gossip, and [having] special access to uncommon knowledge.” Moreover, she notes, “We broadcasters also have that performer’s gene, feeding oversized egos that need constant nourishment.”

Luck and timing are factors in every success story, and Mitchell’s rise is no exception. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she traded in a management-training slot at Westinghouse Broadcasting for a job as a “copy boy” at its Philadelphia news radio station, where she delivered wire-service copy and coffee to the anchormen in the otherwise all-male newsroom. She quickly became an apprentice reporter and worked her way into City Hall, where she covered controversial Mayor Frank Rizzo and then the 1972 political conventions. When she arrived at NBC in 1978, at 32, she had to work her way up from the bottom all over again, starting as a general assignment correspondent (i.e., covering just about anything that came along). She later became the network’s White House correspondent, and, ultimately, its chief foreign correspondent, a job she’s held since 1994.

Any great reporter should be a bit of a troublemaker, especially when covering politicians, and Mitchell is famously adept at provoking her interview subjects. (Former President Clinton wrote on a concocted picture showing her in every seat in the White House press briefing room: “Here’s my nightmare -- They all become clones of you.... One of you is great but sufficient.”) Some politicians have proven more elusive than others. “I learned everything I ever needed to know about questioning artful dodgers by covering the most artful of them all, Ronald Reagan,” she writes.

However, Reagan’s legendarily protective wife, Nancy, was “not an easy subject,” Mitchell writes. “Smart and well rehearsed, she was rarely spontaneous.” With male interviewers, such as her old friend Tom Brokaw, the first lady was “not only more comfortable; she could even be a little flirtatious.... With me, Nancy was wary.”

Mitchell writes of covering some of the 20th century’s most significant events: the Iran-Contra scandal, the Persian Gulf War and the tumultuous years of the Clinton administration. She also writes of the intensity of covering the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath, and she reflects on the increasing national divide between “red” and “blue” states.

Though candid, “Talking Back” is marked by decorum and restraint. Undoubtedly, Mitchell has too many sources and friends in high places to risk alienating anyone. Yet her quirky anecdotes and smart insights about the world’s power players make her book satisfying. At its best, the reader feels like a rapt cocktail party guest, listening to amazing stories from a bold and admirable career.

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Carmela Ciuraru, editor of six anthologies of poetry, including “Motherhood: Poems About Mothers,” is a regular contributor to Book Review.