Gary Pearce posted on August 20, 2009 09:52
I never liked the crabby grouch Bob Novak played on television. But I did like Bob Novak the reporter.
I got to know him when he covered the Hunt-Helms race in 1984.
Novak obviously was a conservative, but I don’t know what he thought of Helms. He liked Hunt personally, but I don’t know about politically.
Whatever his personal views, he was a consummate professional. He worked hard. He asked tough, but fair questions. And his stories were always accurate.
Most of all, I was struck by how friendly and courteous he always was. Just like a lot of the Bigfoot Reporters who parachuted into that race: David Broder, Al Hunt, Adam Clymer.
None of them had the arrogant attitude a lot of North Carolina reporters had. Of course, they didn’t need attitude, they had ability.
Amazingly, a lot of them are still working and writing 25 years later. You wonder, the way newspapers are going, if we’ll see their like 25 years from now.