Father and Son 

• NBC News

My father, Sander Vanocur, was one of America's most respected political reporters. He covered every major story and politician of the 1960s. He reported on John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Richard Nixon. His reporting assignments took him from the civil rights struggles in the Mississippi Delta to the war-torn Mekong Delta of Vietnam.

Before his passing in 2019, I was tasked with cleaning and organizing his study. Fortuitously, Dad, an acclaimed TV reporter, saved many dispatches and documents from these extraordinary times.

As a reporter myself, I soon realized I had stumbled onto a fascinating story. It was the story not only of my father's remarkable achievements, but also how closely my life and career paralleled his.

Here are some exclusive excerpts from my new book, Sander's Study: A Son's Story (available on Amazon).

Dad's Favorite Story
May 8, 1967, was one of the most significant days of my father's career. He was in the South working on an hour-long special for NBC News entitled, After Civil Rights: Black Power.

In some ways, this NBC News special was the culmination of my dad's coverage of the civil rights movement. He had started covering the movement almost immediately after joining the network a decade before.

In Dad's study, I found an extensive and revealing interview he did with the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit aimed at supporting the First Amendment and journalism in general. The transcript of my father's interview runs for more than 40 pages, and a significant portion of it deals with his time covering civil rights.

Reading Dad's comments, I was surprised to learn how fearful he was covering the story in the South. He told the Forum interviewer, "What stands out in my mind during that period is why I didn't get a club in the back of my neck because, in those days, it was very tough."

• The cover of Sander’s Study, showing Sander Vanocur in a meeting with President John F. Kennedy. | Chris Vanocur, a Utah-based journalist and author of Sander’s Study: A Son’s Story.

These words startled me. I had this notion of my father being pretty stoic and unflappable. Yet here he was freely admitting to being afraid of what might happen to him in a dangerous and unfamiliar setting.

Dad also told the Freedom Forum about one particularly hair-raising experience in the South: "I was [covering] something in Mississippi, a white man trying to get elected sheriff ... and I went to see the white deputy and he ordered me out of the county by dusk. So, I said to the cameraman and the sound man, 'Let's find some circuitous route and get out of here because this is not an idle threat.'"

But of all the alarming civil rights comments my father made in the Freedom Forum interview, one stood out the most. It came when Dad compared covering civil rights to another dangerous assignment: "Mostly, it was just sheer survival because things could get very nasty. I've told people I felt safer in Vietnam in '65 than I felt in parts of the South, though I love the South."

Despite the danger my father felt, he also said he was "blessed" to have covered the civil rights story. I strongly suspect this was because of what happened on May 8, 1967. This was the day he interviewed Martin Luther King Jr.

An article from the NBC News website described the interview as "extraordinary" and "wide-ranging." Having now watched most of it on YouTube, I can certainly attest to the accuracy of that description.

King appeared more somber and reflective in the interview than he did in the soaring speeches many of us remember. Early in the interview, King told my father the country still had significant racist elements, in the North as well as the South.

Dad told the Freedom Forum he was quite taken seeing a moral figure like King. Also, after dealing with politicians for nearly a decade, my father was impressed by the fact that King, "never tried to lie to me or anybody else that I know."

King, for his part, patiently and thoughtfully explained why racism ran so deep in America's history and psyche. One comment in particular left a deep impression on my father. It came when King told him that in Roget's Thesaurus, one would find many synonyms for Black which were negative. But the synonyms for white, King observed, signified pureness and virtue.

Dad told the Freedom Forum this was a comment he would never forget.

But for me, the most important part of the interview came at roughly the 20-minute mark. My father asked about the "I Have a Dream" speech, which had taken place four years before. King told my dad that the speech had taken place during a period of great hope for him and for many others across the nation.

• Chris and Sander Vanocur are seen side-by-side in a pair of family photos. Both men won acclaim as political reporters.

What came next, though, genuinely stunned me, and I wondered what went through Dad's mind when he heard King say, "That dream that I had that day has, in many points, turned into a nightmare." King went on to explain that he still had hope for America in the future, but he also saw many difficult days ahead.

Less than a year after my father interviewed him, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. Until I saw the interview, the documentary and my father's comments to the Freedom Forum, I never realized how much he meant to Dad. In a particularly revealing and clear-eyed answer to the Freedom Forum, he summed up his reaction to King's assassination:

"I couldn't believe Dr. King was killed. Later, as I got older, I have this dreaded sense that society finds a way to deal with martyrs or visionaries, and it's not very pleasant. It's almost as if society throws up visionaries like Dr. King as martyrs to our own pettiness and meanness."

The Freedom Forum was kind enough to send me the video of its interview with my father. As Dad spoke these particularly painful words, I could sense the emotions churning up inside him. He concluded by paraphrasing John O'Hara's quote about the passing of George Gershwin. Dad said of Martin Luther King Jr., "I didn't want to believe that Dr. King was dead. I still don't."

My father said the civil rights movement was both an epic and a rare story, one that didn't often come a reporter's way. He made clear to me that it was his favorite story to cover, and King was his favorite interview. He said no one else even came close.

Instinctively, I understood why Dad prized this story above all others. The civil rights struggle was clearly a turning point in American history. Not to mention, all the heroic and noble protesters battling segregation made for a very compelling and visual story.

But for some reason, I needed my father to tell me in his own words why this was the greatest story of his illustrious and memorable career. I wanted to hear it not in the words of a reporter but from Sander Vanocur the person.

So, I asked him what it was specifically that made the civil rights struggle his favorite story.

My elderly father slowly turned toward me and gave me a loving look. He smiled and said simply, "It was a good cause."

Words of Wisdom
Over the years, Dad gave me many valuable tips about work and about life. I've whittled them down to a dozen key lessons:

Sooner or later, everything in life is political.
I think my father borrowed this phrase from George Orwell. Dad first told me this when I was pretty young, maybe still in high school. Initially, I was skeptical. I didn't want to believe politics seeped into all areas of life. So, I pushed back.

I asked Dad if he really meant everything. He said, yes, everything. I thought about it for a spell and then naively asked, "But surely that doesn't apply to things like love and marriage?"

Dad chuckled and said, "Son, especially that."

• Throughout his career, Sander Vanocur, above, interviewed notable individuals including Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, right, as well as President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The key to good writing is knowing what to leave out.
This may be the best single piece of advice Dad gave me about being a reporter. It took a few years to hone my writing skills, but I eventually figured out what he meant. Simply put, the fewer words the better.

I knew I was making progress when one semi-surly boss grudgingly told me, "Well, Vanocur, nobody ever said you couldn't write."

It was a bit of a backhanded compliment, but an acknowledgment of my writing chops nonetheless.

The small stories are often the best.
Since covering state government was part of my political reporting portfolio, I was once assigned to cover the cutting down of the state Christmas tree. So, too early one morning, I arrived at a Salt Lake neighborhood just as state workers were about to cut down an oversize holiday tree.

Luckily, one of my closest friends was the photographer who had been assigned to shoot the story. I asked him how in the hell we were going to cover this. Immediately, he said, "Just cover it like a crime story, like they're murdering the tree."

So, we did.

I took a tongue-in-cheek approach to the story and used as many overwrought pulp fiction cliches as I could think of. Neighborhood residents watching the tree cutting were described as, "Innocent neighbors powerless to stop the cold-blooded murder." We even threw in a fake movie scream in the story just as the tree was cut down.

And when the newly murdered tree made its way to the Capitol rotunda, I described how its "pine guts" spilled out onto the cold, hard, and unforgiving marble floor.

I think my bosses were genuinely frightened by the story. But one of the main anchors loved it. He said I could send this story out to stations in other cities and immediately get a dozen job offers.

Months later, much to my amusement, the piece was even nominated for an Emmy.

Sometimes the best stories come from the losers' locker room.
While at first blush this appears to be about sports, it really applies to all sorts of reporting.

One of the first stories I broke in my career was about the decision to close South High School in Salt Lake City. A source tipped me off that the Salt Lake Board of Education was going to close one of its four high schools due to dwindling enrollment. And South High was the one to be shuttered at the end of the school year.

It occurred to me that reporting on South High for its entire final year would make a great story. So, another trusted photographer and I made it a point to cover the big milestones of South High's last year. These included things like homecoming, the prom and graduation.

We told the story through the eyes of one senior, a gifted teacher and a beloved and wise principal. Not only did we air numerous daily stories about the closing of the school, but we even had enough footage to do a documentary called Goodbye South High. Our documentary helped showcase South's admirable school spirit while dealing with an emotional and difficult year.

Dad had been right. By focusing in-depth on a school that had lost its battle to stay open, we were able to capture the student's real, raw and ultimately heartwarming emotions. We found all this in the so-called "losers' locker room."

But in the eyes of viewers and many in the community, those at South High were winners.

The best time to call a source is when you don't want anything.
There's an old saying in journalism that a reporter is only as good as his or her sources. My father certainly supported this notion.

Dad tried to meet everyone everywhere. He also did his best to stay in touch, either calling just to say "hello" or writing letters to congratulate or offer condolences. This courtesy helped Dad in his journalism career and even after he stopped reporting.

When my father left network news for good, many of his old contacts were there with much appreciated offers of employment. He had watched out for them and—in many cases—they reciprocated.

Having learned from his example, I also held my sources close. Whether it was remembering their birthdays, buying them drinks or treating them to special thank-you lunches around Christmas, I realized their story tips were what kept me in business. In return, they remembered my little gestures of appreciation and would reward me with story leads. Sometimes, even years later.

• A pair of photos from Sander Vanocur’s study, which contained extensive notes, dispatches and other materials from years of national political reporting.

The best interviewers listen more than they talk.
When I was starting out as a reporter, I used to make highly detailed lists of what questions to ask during interviews. I would then ask these questions, checking them off one by one as if completing a to-do list.

But I was so determined to ask all my questions in the exact order I wrote them, I wasn't really listening to the answers.

Eventually, I wised up and followed Dad's advice. I ditched the lengthy list of questions and simply started listening to each and every response. It was amazing how much I learned by paying closer attention to their words, their emotions and their expressions.

Every now and then, you have to throw a chair at work.
This is one piece of advice from my father that I wish I had followed more closely.

Now, to be clear, he wasn't actually advocating throwing a chair at work. But he strongly believed you had to occasionally let your bosses know if something was pissing you off. Otherwise, Dad reasoned, the company might start taking you for granted and take advantage of you.

Judging by some of the memos and letters I found in his study, I suspect Dad successfully used this strategy to help get him raises and promotions.

Never trust a reporter with a clean desk.
It's not really necessary to spend a lot of time unpacking this wry observation. Dad simply felt reporters with messy desks were more interested in chasing stories than keeping their workplaces spotless.

Don't be afraid to use silence in your stories.
My father had no patience for anchors and reporters who talked too much. He thought they just rambled on and on because they liked to hear the sound of their own voices or wanted to prove to everyone how smart they were.

Instead, Dad drilled into me the importance of using the video's natural sound to tell the story. Or, in some cases, using silence to let the story tell itself.

On one memorable occasion—covering Robert Kennedy's memorial service—my father purposely went several minutes without saying a word. He believed it was one of the longest periods of sustained silence in TV history.

• Sander Vanocur

Luck is the residue of design.
Over and over, my father would repeat this saying to me. He attributed it to Branch Rickey, the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers honcho who signed Jackie Robinson to break baseball's color barrier. Another way of expressing this is, as Louis Pasteur once said, "Fortune favors the prepared mind."

Over time, this became my mantra. When working on stories, I not only envisioned how I hoped the story would play out, I also made sure I thought about what could go wrong. Having contingency plans helped save my reporting ass on many occasions. I even incorporated this preparedness philosophy into the non-news elements of my life.

'Holy Shit' stories
Now and then, Dad would refer to a news report as a "Holy Shit" story. I'm not sure, but he may have learned this phrase from his friend Ben Bradlee, the fabled editor of The Washington Post.

As the "HSS" name implies, this term is reserved for the story that makes viewers or readers say "Holy shit!" when they see it.

Little did Dad know that someday I would break a "Holy Shit" (Olympic) story that would make headlines all around the world.

Having sex after 60 is like trying to squeeze an oyster into a coin slot
This doesn't really have anything to do with news or my father helping me become a better reporter. But ever since Dad told me this, I've been unable to erase this disturbing image from my mind.

Since I don't want to suffer alone, I have now passed on this pearl of wisdom to you.

Chris Vanocur is a recovering TV reporter based in Utah. He has been awarded both of broadcasting's top news honors: the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and the George Foster Peabody Award. He received these after uncovering the worldwide scandal surrounding alleged bribery at Salt Lake's 2002 Olympic Games.

Chris can be found on Twitter, Instagram and even TikTok, either under his name or @NewsVulcan.