Cover Story

Issue date:
October 24-26, 1997

The Power of Perseverance

Jane Pauley, on TV nearly every night, says 25 years is just a running start.

Pauley's presence It's "all Jane, all the time," Pauley jokes: Four nights a week, she co-anchors NBC's Dateline with Stone Phillips. Weeknights she hosts MSNBC's Time and Again.

ust when many baby boomers are cranking up their 401(k)s, tearing out their thinning hair over how to escape a job rut and eyeing their 30-year-old bosses with suspicion, Jane Pauley has an announcement:

"I've never felt more committed, more competent, more confident,'' she asserts in her sunny corner office at NBC's swanky Rockefeller Center headquarters in New York. "And having arrived at this point, I'm inclined to think it should last a very long time.''

Marking 25 years on the air as of this fall, Pauley is TV's Ms. Perseverance. At a time when so many people are job-jumping, often not by choice, she's an anomaly. Neither a bombed TV show (remember Real Life With Jane Pauley?), nor a phony truck explosion (Dateline's GM truck fiasco), nor getting shoved aside for a younger, blonder woman (when Deborah Norville replaced her on the Today show) has brought her down.

Incredibly, almost inexplicably, the career bumps seem to have helped. She's a survivor in the unforgiving glare of network television. Even now, as co-anchor with Stone Phillips of Dateline, an oft-derided show once panned by TV critic Tom Shales for "junky'' tabloid stories like last month's piece on a teacher's affair with a sixth-grade student, Pauley seems like the Teflon lady.

Indeed, Pauley, who turns 47 next Friday, seems to have something very few people in or outside TV can claim: job longevity, security -- and satisfaction. "Powerful'' is how Tom Brokaw describes his one-time protégée's current position at NBC. How so? "She's co-anchor of one of the most successful newsmagazine shows of this decade, and she's in great standing with the American TV audience.''

That Pauley can capitalize on the smarts that come with age is a relatively new phenomenon in the once wrinkle-free zone of television; being a grown-up woman is no longer a career-buster in TV news. Witness Barbara Walters (66) and Diane Sawyer (51).

Not only has Pauley held on to her job for a quarter-century, she has done it without sacrificing her personal life on the altar of success.

She's been married to Garry Trudeau, the sharp-witted, publicity-averse Doonesbury cartoonist, for 17 years. Most nights, she heads home to her reportedly elegant Upper West Side apartment for a family dinner with their children, twins Ross and Rachel, 12, and Thomas, 11. Twice a week, Jane cooks ("you're entitled to order out,'' she notes); twice a week, Garry cooks; twice a week, the baby sitter cooks. Sunday nights are up for grabs. If the kids need to call Mom or Dad in the afternoon, Dad usually gets the call. "He answers his own phone -- I don't,'' Pauley explains. It's a parenting partnership that extends beyond kitchen duties that any working mom would kill for.

Of course, Pauley isn't immune to real life. In August, she lost her mother. And earlier in her marriage, Pauley recounts, "Garry and I lost a baby -- we had a miscarriage -- I had another miscarriage extremely early. But that's it for disappointments in my life. And when we finally accomplished a successful pregnancy, I got two!"

Pauley is "wedded to the concept of objectivity" -- but as for her husband, Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau, "unfairness is his stock and trade."

That's they way she talks: "accomplished a successful pregnancy.'' A little haughty, sometimes in the third person, but candid. It is this combination of candor, self-confidence and slight superiority that seems to connect with viewers and helps explain her long run in the public eye.

Born in Bloomington, Ind., she's the Midwestern girl next door, the one who moved to the big city straight out of college and never came back. But the heartland values stuck. Pauley fondly describes her late father, who worked for an evaporated-milk company, as a Jimmy Stewart type, a warm, no-nonsense dad who raised Pauley and her older sister, Ann, now a Westinghouse executive, "to mistrust the good stuff and be always prepared for misfortune that might be around the corner.''

t a time when tabloid TV, evil paparazzi and high-testosterone journalism are out, the highly polished Pauley's lack of edge seems a plus. "She's professional, but not rabid, and that has really given her distinction,'' says Jack Curry, managing editor of TV Guide. If that bothers her boss, Dateline executive producer Neal Shapiro, he's not saying.

"She doesn't do the investigative, breaking news stories,'' Shapiro says. "What Jane does best are the stories where she can really connect with people, real triumph over tragedy.''

The fact that Pauley is not known as a shark who nabs big scoops -- the Colin Powells and Michael Jacksons -- may add to her appeal, but not to her pocketbook. Pauley earns a respectable $2 million a year, reportedly, compared with the stratospheric $5 million to $7 million commanded by fellow TV news celebs.

Ironically for someone who landed a network anchor job at 25, Pauley sees herself as a late bloomer. She says that in her early days on Today, when she co-anchored with Brokaw, she actually was very insecure and felt "dramatically in Tom's shadow.'' The turning point, she says, was the moment she left Today eight years ago. "It was the first major bump in my career, and I had to deal with it.''

After that, and the public plaudits that came with her high-profile departure, "I grew into middle age and recognized a confidence and strength that were unfamiliar to me, and I like them.''

Part of the Pauley no-stick formula is adhering to a strict separation of work and family, her job and his. Pauley insists she "never'' helps her husband with his strips, doesn't read them daily, and "zero'' of Pauley or their kids is reflected in his characters. On Trudeau's side, he is not a regular Pauley watcher on TV. But, says Pauley, "We both can be fairly judgmental. But it is based on an optimism of high expectations.

"The big difference between us professionally is that I am absolutely wedded to the concept of objectivity and fairness, and Garry will point out that, as a satirist, unfairness is his stock and trade.''

Once home, Pauley says, she leaves "my celebrity at the door.'' And while she's adept at talking openly about herself, the curtain comes down when it comes to the kids. No interviews, no photos at home, no information. She will not even confirm the children's ages.

auley's protectiveness toward her brood extends to other famous families as well. She talks rhapsodically about the success the Clintons and Jackie Onassis had in raising their children out of the public -- read: the media's -- eye. "You look for people who do it well, and we try to emulate them.''

Does that mean Pauley wouldn't want to interview Chelsea Clinton, for example? Not exactly. She says she has made it known that if the first daughter ever does an interview, it should be with her. But, Pauley adds, "If the president and Mrs. Clinton leave the White House and Chelsea has never spoken in an interview -- and I believe that will be the case -- I will be applauding the most strenuously.''

So, after all these years, any regrets?

"Mostly for the bad hairdos,'' she says, letting out a roar of a laugh. "I'm happy to say that more than not people have commented that I seem to have finally gotten it right.''

Carol Clurman is an associate editor of USA WEEKEND.

Pauley gets personal

On TV critic Tom Shales calling Dateline "junky, gimmicky'':
"You have to separate Dateline early, middle and recent. We might have deserved whatever bad things he said. If I was anonymously assigned to review Dateline, I would not have written good reviews of every show we have ever done. No way.''

On Matt Lauer of the Today show:
"The self-deprecation thing he does, while charming -- I think he will be happier when he learns it wasn't a fluke, that they did give the job to the right man.''

On Katie Couric of the Today show:
"I talk to Katie about children a lot.'' What about giving her advice about hosting Today? "Oh, no, I would never!''

On her former Today co-host, Bryant Gumbel:
"We're close friends and will be forever. ... He's got a make-no-apologies personality. It's part of his charm.''

On advising daughter Rachel, 12, who wants to be a TV journalist:
"If [she] takes my advice -- and it will be given, not imposed -- she'll get a liberal arts education. She probably won't major in journalism; maybe she'll minor in it. I would encourage her to major in something else: history, English, economics, a foreign language.''

On being a big-shot network anchor:
"Garry [Trudeau, her husband] gets a kick out of me talking about my bosses, as if he thinks someone with my name recognition and salary level is an independent functioning universe of her own at NBC. I could behave that way if I wanted to, but I don't. I've always thought of myself as having a boss.''

On why she's started taking golf lessons:
"When I'm a grandmother and all I've got is the videotapes in boxes that the children and grandchildren do not want to watch, what will I do that will make me interesting to them and to myself? Golf is something your children will do with you because they'll take you if you pay.''