When Jane Pauley takes the stage this evening at the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences 45th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards to receive her Lifetime Achievement statue, the pioneering broadcast journalist knows who she’ll be looking for in the audience.
“I’ll be thinking about my three children—even though one of them did ask to go to the Yankees game instead,” Pauley tells TVNewser with a hearty laugh. “Also, my husband of 44 years [cartoonist Garry Trudeau], he’ll be there, too.”
But there’s someone else that Pauley expects to see from the stage, a person only visible to her. That would be “Janie,” the 22-year-old woman from Indiana who broke into the TV news business in 1972 and became “Jane Pauley” to millions of viewers via her presence on Today, Dateline NBC and, currently, CBS News Sunday Morning.
“I’ll be thinking of Janie,” Pauley, now 73, admits. “She’s long gone now, but I dunno—maybe she’s not that far gone.”
Talking to Pauley, it’s apparent that “Janie” remains present inside her, glimpsed when she reflects with gratitude and no small amount of surprise on her longevity in the news game, a career that’s spanned multiple networks, timeslots, and formats. But “Jane” herself has also grown and changed over the years, particularly when it comes to recognizing and celebrating her achievements.
That kind of self-validation didn’t always come easily for Pauley, who memorably wrote in her 2004 autobiography Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue: “I am not one of the great journalists of my time.”
For the record, she still agrees with that assessment… but she’s going to accept her Lifetime Achievement Emmy anyway.
“I think my husband was a little concerned that I might try to talk them out of it,” Pauley jokes. “Frankly, at this stage of life, I do seem to have grown out of that somewhat. I can look back on the younger me and give her more credit than I would have given her before.”
