Who comes to mind when you hear the words “TV news” and “storytelling?” For me, it’s a short list. The late Charles Kuralt and his On The Road stories for CBS News. Steve Hartman, who revived the On the Road franchise for CBS. Bob Dotson of NBC News and his American Stories. And Boyd Huppert at KARE in Minneapolis, who roams the Land of 10,000 Stories. So how cool is it that one storytelling legend recently sat down to interview another? Pretty cool.
Kuralt died almost 20 years ago, so even if you remember him as the anchor of CBS Sunday Morning, you may never have seen his work “On the Road.” His segments were a regular feature on the CBS Evening News beginning in 1967 and ran for almost a quarter century. Cameraman Izzy Bleckman traveled the country with Kuralt in an RV, finding stories wherever they went.
A lot of people wondered why – why would you come out and do a story about me? And maybe after they saw it, they saw something they never knew about themselves, that they did have something to say, that they did have an interesting story to tell. Wed’ have a tough time after spending time with some of these folks detaching ourselves, getting back in the bus. Wed just seen something terrific, a calm and beautiful existence.
Kuralt told the stories of “ordinary” Americans with the greatest of respect. Here’s just one example:
