Brian Lamb: The minimalist journalist

In 1995 I was briefly in the public eye because a book of mine played a part in the welfare reform debate. About 200 journalists interviewed me that year, and the best was Brian Lamb, because he probed for specific detail and didn’t talk about himself. Lamb is the founder, retired CEO, and executive chairman of C-SPAN. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to turn the tables on him. Here are edited excerpts of an interview in front of students at Patrick Henry College.

As a teenager you interviewed people on your local radio station. Henry Rosenthal, part-owner of the radio station, knew I wanted to get into radio. He hired me out of high school for a dollar an hour to file records, do whatever they told me to do. He knew I wanted to go on the air and one day he said to me, “Would you like to make a station break tonight?” I said I’d love to. So at 7 that night I got to tell the world of Lafayette, Ind., what the name of the radio station was.

How would you do that? I would say, “This is WASK radio, 1450 on your dial, Lafayette, Indiana.”

You interviewed some very prominent people, such as Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole. How did you set up those interviews? They were appearing at nearby Purdue, and I had a show on Saturday morning. I just picked up the phone, called the hotel on campus, and asked for the person who was entertaining. They’d ring the room. If they answered, I would say, “I’m on the radio. Would you like to talk with me?” They didn’t have much choice unless they wanted to be very rude, and they never were.

‘I’d liked to be remembered as doing what I said I was going to do in my own particular life.’

Was your method of interviewing then much as it became—minimalist style? I haven’t gone back to listen to any of those tapes in a long time, but I know I never was much a part of the interview itself. A fellow in my high school taught me to interview. He said you should stay simple and basic and do the who, what, why, when, where, and how questions that people ask in journalism. I always thought that he was right about that. Today, the interviewer is expected to be much more involved and much more opinionated.

Students can google Brian Lamb or C-SPAN and see a lot of fascinating interviews. I was looking at an interview with then-President George W. Bush 10 years ago where he said he was reading the Bible every day. I was surprised by your next question, “Can I ask you about indecency?” Why not a follow-up on the Bible? Flawed. I should have asked him more about the Bible.

I asked that because I’ve seen many interviews with people I know are strong Christians, but many journalists shy away from asking them questions about what’s really important to the interviewees. I would love going down that road because you learn a lot about them. I probably did the last television interview with Christopher Hitchens: People kept praying for him and he said, “Go ahead and pray for me, but it’s not going to change me. I’m not going to have a deathbed conversion.” We’ll never know whether he had a deathbed conversion, but he was very willing to talk about it all the time.

I’ve found that just about all interviewers, certainly on radio, don’t read the book. They’ve often received a press release associated with a list of potential questions and they just read off the questions, which is very boring for the interviewee. Some of the questions in those press releases are good, but I always worry about the interviewee on a book tour interviewed 10 times and really tired of the same old questions.

I’m trying to think of a question you maybe haven’t been asked. Why is funeral coverage so popular on C-SPAN? We’ve always been surprised by how popular, how funerals are watched by so many people. I think it makes sense. Let’s face it, all of our lives we’re thinking about what the end of our life is going to be. I’ve commented, though not on camera, that you could almost start a funeral channel 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and probably have a pretty good audience.

Cooking channels, funeral channels. Wedding channels would probably do very well.

OK, macabre question. You don’t look different than you did 20 years ago, so I’m not suggesting anything, but … I ask this question all the time.

At some point down the road there will be a funeral for you. How would you like to be remembered? I have no interest in how I would be remembered. I’m not much of a legacy person. I’d liked to be remembered as doing what I said I was going to do in my own particular life. But, when I’m gone it won’t matter what anybody says. I’ll be gone: the less said the better. I was raised a Catholic and it seems strange to me that when you’re raised a Catholic and they talk about that you are going to die and go to heaven, and people mourn the fact that people are gone. It seems like that would be the most joyous time. I guess that’s just human nature.

Politically you want to be neutral. Religiously neutral also? Yeah, I never talk about religion. I never talked about it on the air. I didn’t think it was appropriate. You’re better off keeping your own personal life out of it. I’ve tried to do that for the last 37 years.

And you try to do that even when you’re interviewed. I try to, yeah. Unless I have a probing interviewer.

Let me probe a little more. Does the thought of all the history going by, but you’re not around to watch it or learn from it, bother you? I don’t know that it bothers me, but I do think about it. I’m 73 and in good health, but you can’t help but watch the world go by. For those of you who aren’t 73, I can tell you it goes by faster and faster the older you get. Things just happen quickly. I’m not particularly looking forward to the day when I’m not involved. I don’t have to be involved and interview important people, but I want to learn and I’m fortunate that I can still go to C-SPAN every day, have a responsibility there. The day that I can’t do that anymore is going to be difficult.

But I’m not just asking about retirement in terms of jobs—I’m asking about retirement from this world. Does that thought bother you: History goes on, the world goes on, but you … I think about it, but it doesn’t bother me. I don’t sit around in great fear that one day I’m going to be gone, because I’ve seen, frankly, too many friends go, and you start to realize that you’re just here for a short period of time. It happens, but I don’t dwell on it.

If you had only two news networks you could watch, CNN and FOX, which would you watch? There’s not a chance I’ll answer that question.

See also “Growing up Brian Lamb,” “The musical Brian Lamb,” and “How C-SPAN started.”