Lester Holt is sitting in his rather cramped office talking to a visitor when Gary Weitman, WBBM-Ch. 2 managing editor, interrupts. Holt, who usually gets to the McClurg Court studios between 1 and 1:30 in the afternoon, arrived earlier this day because he had arranged for his 8-year-old son, Stefan, and his friends to take a newsroom tour.
Weitman needs a moment–what staffers call a “Lester Holt Moment”–for the 6 p.m. newscast. Something in the program-ending commentary to reassure kids, in light of the murder of young Christopher Meyer near Kankakee. Something sweet and tender. Something about three minutes long.
Holt, 36, thinks about his own family and what Stefan and 5-year-old Cameron mean to him.
After tossing around a few ideas with Weitman, Holt says, “I like the concept. It’s just a tough thing to verbalize.”
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While that particular Lester Holt Moment never was used, because of time constraints, verbalizing things seldom is tough for Holt, who last April succeeded Bill Kurtis as co-anchor of the CBS affiliate’s 10 p.m. newscast. His promotion came as no surprise. In fact, if anything, his friends and associates wondered what took the news junkie so long.
Johnathan Rodgers, the general manager who brought Holt to WBBM in 1987 and is now president of CBS Television Stations, says he likes that Holt “stuck it out,” disdaining bids from both WCBS-TV in New York and the CBS network. Despite “several opportunities to leave WBBM,” says Rodgers, Holt “made a commitment to spending his life in Chicago. Les always had his head on straight. You’re at and you see Walter Jacobson and Bill Kurtis and you wonder if they’re going to move on or retire.”
But in 1989 Jacobson was switched to the early newscast, and two years ago he jumped to WFLD-Ch. 32. Then in April Kurtis relinquished his 10 p.m. anchoring chores. Holt was chosen by management to halt the slide that began when Bill “Slash and Trash” Applegate was general manager and the station’s newscasts tumbled deep into third place.
Holt’s calm sensibility as not only a news reporter, but a reporter at one time on CBS’ prime-time “48 Hours,” could go a long way to overcome old images of ambush interviews and overhyped crime stories that typified Applegate’s regime.
The hyperexcitement, which at first led to top ratings, backfired to the point current station manager Bob McGann took to the air in January to explain to viewers that Channel 2 news was no longer the tabloid jungle.
McGann, when faced with a decision to replace the graying eminence of Kurtis, says he didn’t hesitate to promote Holt last spring. “Lester had been anchoring our early news for the past seven years,” says McGann. “He’s professional and he’s also very likable. Those are the two ingredients in an anchorman. He will grow to become one of the top anchors in Chicago. I believe the future of the 10 o’clock news at Channel 2 is with Lester Holt.”
Jerry Nachman, now news director at WCBS-TV in New York, who twice hired Holt (at KCBS-AM in San Francisco in 1979 and again at WCBS-TV two years later), admires Holt’s versatility. He “makes life a dream for producers and writers,” says Nachman, “because you don’t have to program around him.”
And Linda MacLennan, his co-anchor for seven of his eight years at Channel 2, calls Holt “a rarity in this business among people my age” because he has “news in his blood. That is more an exception than the rule these days. He loves the stuff.”
With his new job added to his other anchoring chores on the hour-long 4:30 p.m. newscast and occasional “Newsbreaks,” Holt’s days of covering breaking stories have ended. But not his work on the station’s “News Extra” investigative reports. “That’s enough exposure for one person,” Holt says with a laugh.
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Holt came to Chicago from New York’s WCBS-TV, at Rodgers’ request, in 1987, a tumultuous time for race relations at the station. Operation PUSH had organized a boycott to protest the demotion of black anchor Harry Porterfield to make room for Kurtis, who found “CBS This Morning” not to his liking.
After discussions with PUSH officials, Rodgers agreed to increase minority employment at the station. At the same time, he called for Holt, the good-looking young African-American with the impeccable credentials. It was the right time and the right place.
Or was it? There has been criticism that perhaps Holt is not black enough.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s said; it’s not said to my face,” says Holt, but then he begins to choose his words carefully. “I’ve never been one to carry race on my sleeve and I’ve never been one to really use my race. You could argue I was given this opportunity because of a racial issue. But I certainly wasn’t hired because I’m black, not with my qualifications and track record.”
That track record began at the age of 16 as an intern at NBC affiliate KCRA-TV in Sacramento. It would be the only non-CBS television outlet Holt would see. In quick succession, there were stops at a country-music radio station, CBS’ San Francisco all-news radio station, CBS’ New York TV station, CBS’ Los Angeles TV station, back to New York again and, eventually, CBS’ Chicago TV station.
This isn’t some token black brought in from the sticks.
“Everyone knows I’m black,” says Holt. “I am who I am. This is the person that Lester Sr. and June Holt raised and I make no apology for it. At the same time, I’m never going to pull a race card to get what I want. You can’t have it both ways.”
Which can be a tender issue in a city like Chicago, which sometimes seems to see color before all other issues. “That shocked me,” Holt says. “What was a real slap in the face when I came here was that so many things had to be measured in black and white. You could argue that it’s healthy because we’re one of the few towns in the country where we at least talk about it. It surprised me.”
But Holt also is mindful that media outlets have a responsibility to represent their communities. He tells of his mother, on a recent visit, recalling an incident that happened when he was a child.
“I asked her how come there weren’t any colored people on TV,” he says. “She looks back and says now, `Can you believe you said that? And look where you are.’ She’s very proud. That’s why it’s very important that stations represent minorities. I feel I can best serve everyone by just being a competent professional journalist.
“I really bristle when I get called to events and people introduce me as one of the top black anchors in the country. You know, that’s very insulting. I’m striving to be one of the best anchors in the country. handcuff me like that. What you’re saying is, `You’re black. You should only expect to rise to the level of the best at being black.’ That’s immoral.”
Those who know Holt agree.
“What does he know from affirmative action?” asks Nachman rhetorically. “Because he’s an Air Force brat, he doesn’t know that culture. He’s just Lester–can’t dance, can’t play ball. . . . He’s the goods.”
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Holt, like most news anchors, sometimes slips into the Ted Baxter-like mode, a self-important tone, made worse when his tongue slips and he mispronounces the name of a local hero like baseball star Bill Skowron. While he never takes himself too seriously, say co-workers, he is kind of straight-laced.
He’s “a very witty, droll guy,” says MacLennan, who points to the year-end station blooper reel Holt compiles or the role Holt played emceeing the Chicago Headline Club’s Gridiron Show this year. “He’s a very funny guy. That has come out more in the past couple of years.”
Counters Channel 2 reporter Larry Mendte, “He’s a goody two-shoes. It’s not an act. We were in Toronto in 1993 to cover the 1993 American League playoffs and we wanted to go to the game. Instead of using whatever clout we had with the network, Lester made us buy a couple of cheap seats from scalpers.”
After Mendte, who calls himself the station’s “bad boy,” kept pointing out empty seats in the VIP sections, Holt eventually gave in and moved. “It was the worst time I ever had,” says Mendte, because Holt “kept looking around, saying, `They’re going to see me on national TV and they’re going to see me in Chicago.’ “
Adds Mendte: “He’s probably the only guy in America who doesn’t tear off the tag on his mattresses.”
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Despite Channel 2’s current ratings, which still hold around an 8 (or less than half what top-rated WLS-Ch. 7 gets), Holt will be given plenty of time to develop a following. After all, Ron Magers has been the 10 p.m. anchor at WMAQ-Ch. 5 for 13 years and John Drury, who has been in the market for more than 25 years, has been doing the same thing at WLS-Ch. 7 for 12. Holt still has four years left on his current contract.
And he only wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll disc jockey like his older half-brother Michael Swanigan (now the chief pilot for Alaska Airways) had been when the family lived in Alaska. “As a 13-, 14-year-old kid, I’d sit on my bed with a tape recorder and a newspaper,” remembers Holt. “I would do my own newscast. I would practice my diction.”
Which only reaffirms MacLennan’s opinion that “he probably was a news nerd from the time he was able to think.”
Holt, who spent most of his youth in Northern California, would talk his way into local radio stations, just to watch what was going on. By the time he was 16, he had talked his way into an internship at KCRA-TV in Sacramento.
After starting college at Cal State-Sacramento, Holt talked his way into a full-time job at popular country-music station KRAK-AM as a news reporter. His reward was a station mobile unit, complete with two-way radio and police scanner. Holt was–in KRAK jargon–in hog heaven. And on his way to bigger things in San Francisco.
“In walked this teenager from the improbably call-lettered KRAK,” remembers Nachman, then news director at KCBS-AM. “He said he wanted to be a reporter in news radio. I said, `Lester, you’re 19 years old; this is the fourth or fifth largest radio market, 50,000-watt, CBS-owned station. What makes you think you can do this?’
“Four hours later, he had the job. A year later, he was Mr. All-News Radio in San Francisco, driving the big Ford Fairlane 500 with California plates KCBS 74 and making like $40,000.”
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In the early ’80s, Holt bounced back and forth between New York and Los Angeles, where he was a reporter and weekend news anchor. Holt took the offer at KNXT-TV (now KCBS-TV) in 1982. While there, Holt met a young executive by the name of Johnathan Rodgers.
“I saw a person with unlimited potential,” says Rodgers, who initially brought Holt to Los Angeles from New York. “He wanted to be the main anchor somewhere, if not on the network. But he was willing to do it the right way. Which is to spend his time in the streets reporting.”
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Holt doesn’t know what the future has in store. In a way, he was surprised by the turn of events earlier this year.
There were times when he had felt “impatient” waiting for the job he thought he was ready for, he says. “Now I thank Johnathan Rodgers for holding me back at times. After almost nine years in the market, that was time well served. If they had put me on the 10 o’clock news two, three years earlier, it would have been a disaster for me and the station.”
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Holt likes Chicago. He talks about how happy he and his wife, Carole, are, raising their kids in the city. He talks about how he has spent more time living here than any other place. He keeps in touch with his roots, radio and otherwise, by doing an afternoon news update at urban powerhouse WGCI-FM. Now it’s up to Chicago viewers to decide whether they like him.
His friends say that’s a given. He’s that good.
“Once in a while you hire someone,” says Nachman, “and say this one’s going to be Mickey Mantle. My greatest fear is that I’ll go down in history only as the guy who hired Lester Holt.”
