Tom Brokaw

Brokaw grew up in Webster, South Dakota, the son of a construction-crew foreman, and washed out of his first year at the University of Iowa before transferring to the University of South Dakota, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1962 with a political science degree. He broke into television at a Sioux City, Iowa, station before moving up through Omaha and Atlanta, and NBC hired him in 1966 to report out of Los Angeles, where he covered Ronald Reagan's governorship and the counterculture unraveling around it. A stint co-anchoring the Today show with Jane Pauley followed, and by 1982 NBC had decided he belonged behind the network's biggest desk.

Brokaw became sole anchor of NBC Nightly News on September 5, 1983, and held the chair for 21 years, outlasting both rival network anchors of the era. He was the first English-language broadcast anchor to report the fall of the Berlin Wall, live from Berlin on November 9, 1989, and he anchored NBC's continuous coverage after the September 11 attacks, during which an anthrax-laced letter was mailed to his office. In 1998 he published The Greatest Generation, a bestselling account of the Americans who came of age in the Depression and fought World War Two, and the title became the standard name for that cohort. He left the anchor desk on December 1, 2004, staying on with NBC as a special correspondent for another 17 years.

In April 2018, two women who had worked in television publicly accused Brokaw of unwanted sexual advances in the 1990s, allegations he denied outright, calling them unsubstantiated. Sixty-four of his NBC colleagues, including Rachel Maddow and Andrea Mitchell, signed a letter vouching for his character — other women in the industry criticized that response as reflexive institutional loyalty. NBC did not discipline him, and no legal action followed. The dispute never resolved into a documented finding either way, and it sits uneasily next to the other half of his reputation — the plainspoken chronicler of a generation he described, without apparent irony, as defined by its humility and its restraint.

Brokaw was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer, in August 2013, announced remission in December 2014, and wrote about the experience in A Lucky Life Interrupted in 2015. NBC ended its formal relationship with him in January 2021 after 55 years, and he has kept a lower public profile since, serving on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Rescue Committee. What is not settled is how the 2018 allegations sit against 55 years of on-air work once the fuller assessments eventually get written — whether one recasts the other, or whether, as with several of his contemporaries, the two simply stay side by side in the record.

Tom Brokaw's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• NBC Nightly News television
  Sole anchor for 21 years, 1983 to 2004 1983
• Berlin Wall coverage television
  First English-language broadcast anchor to report the fall of the Wall live 1989
• The Greatest Generation book
  Bestseller that named the World War Two cohort 1998
• September 11 coverage television
  Anchored NBC's continuous coverage after the attacks 2001
• A Lucky Life Interrupted book
  Memoir of his multiple myeloma diagnosis and treatment 2015

• February 6, 1940 aged 0 Born in Webster, South Dakota
• 1962 aged ~22 Graduates Phi Beta Kappa from the University of South Dakota
• 1966 aged ~26 Joins NBC News as a Los Angeles correspondent
• 1976 aged ~36 Becomes co-anchor of the Today show
• September 5, 1983 aged 43 Becomes sole anchor of NBC Nightly News
• November 9, 1989 aged 49 Reports the fall of the Berlin Wall live from Berlin
• December 1, 2004 aged 64 Steps down as anchor after 21 years
• August 2013 aged 73 Diagnosed with multiple myeloma
• January 2021 aged 80 Retires from NBC News after 55 years

• Edward R. Murrow 1908–1965
  Broadcast journalist whose reporting from London during WWII and confrontation with McCarthy set journalistic standards. predecessor in the trade
• Walter Cronkite 1916–2009
  CBS Evening News anchor known as the most trusted man in America during a pivotal era of broadcast journalism. contemporary and rival
• Peter Jennings 1938–2005
  ABC World News Tonight anchor whose calm authority made him one of the most trusted voices in news. rival
• Barbara Walters 1929–2022
  Pioneering broadcast journalist who became the first female co-anchor of a network evening news program. contemporary of