Lou Grant

Thirty years ago, I watched “Lou Grant.”

I was 12-years-old.

I’m shocked it’s been that long. Now, I’m going to get all syrupy about “Lou Grant” but I loved that show.  Ed Asner made the transition from comedy after getting “fired” on the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” and took Lou to a new setting. I’m sure that wasn’t the easiest transition but it worked.

I loved the fieriness of the show and how journalism made a difference in the television world. As a tween (I didn’t even know what that word meant in 1977), it looked like, to me at least, that hard work and dedication could make a difference. As a pre-teen, I was enamoured. I was a child of Watergate, Deep Throat, my parents’ memories of the assassinations of the Kennedys, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and a loveable grandfather who fought in WWII and who knew he did the right thing. I was too young for the assassinations, but I remember my parents perception of them. For my mother, these things were never far from her mind.

So “Lou Grant” spoke to me. For reasons I probably didn’t understand then, but that I do now. 

Anti-press fulminations from the Nixon administration were largely nullified by scandals and disgrace in the White House. It was only later that an anti-media crusade took hold, drawing battle lines between the press and government, and breeding suspicion among much of the citizenry.

It was later, as well, that newspapers were obliged to adapt to emerging, unimagined challenges: new media platforms, “citizen journalists” and information-dispersing gadgets with global reach that anyone could buy.

The Trib reporters were spared these distractions and identity crises. For them, news still took the form of ink on paper, preferably with comics, horoscope and crossword puzzle part of the deal.

The zeitgeist of “Lou Grant” was set forth in the clever opening titles. The cycle began with a twittering bird up in a tree about to be felled and processed into newsprint. By the end of the sequence, the published Tribune has reached its destination a typical reader and, then fully read, is slid into a cage to catch the droppings of a twittering pet bird. A newspaper was a cozy, closed system, and “Lou Grant” celebrated it.

Reporters made a difference in the world of my youth. I saw that as a kid. Now that I’m older and more cynical, I still can remember feeling that I wanted to be a part of something bigger. Of course, life isn’t fair, but on “Lou Grant” there was a sense of fairness that I felt like I could be a part of. In my own way, I’m thinking maybe I’ve done a thing here or there that was important or at least it was to me.
Yeah, I’m a liberal softie. I know that. And “Lou Grant” was part of it.

Happy anniverary Lou, and thanks.