A Successful Man Is One Who Can Lay A Firm Foundation

graphic © eminentlyquotable.com | photo – Wikipedia

“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” – David Brinkley

David Brinkley (1920 – 2003) was an American broadcast journalist and newscaster for NBC and ABC from 1943 to 1997, making him the longest-serving anchor or host of a daily or weekly national television program in America. Over the course of his long career, he received ten Emmy Awards, three George Foster Peabody Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Brinkley was noted for his wry skepticism and irreverent commentaries that set the standard for network television for generation, and spawned imitators. He delivered the news in measured cadences and a reeky tone, going against the mellifluous tradition of news reporting. Washington Post Bart Barnes further described him as “supremely self-confident, not easily impressed, and he came across as less enamored of himself that many of his colleagues.”

Brinkley got his huge break with Chet Huntley on “The Huntley-Brinkley Report,” which would become the leading news program in America for more than a decade. After Huntley’s retirement and the end of his contract with NBC, he was hired by ABC and given his own show, “This Week with David Brinkley,” which again set a new standard for its genre.

Television news reporting wouldn’t have been the same without the influence of Brinkley who was turned down by CBS Radio before he got a job at NBC. Despite a difficult childhood that involved poverty after the untimely death of his father, and having a mom who disapproved of his reading habits, he preserved and ultimately became one of the greatest newsmen in history.