Yesterday, it was announced that Bill Moyers died at 91. His obituaries talk at length about how he was an LBJ aide during the campaign for The Great Society, who became a champion of public television and independent media.
As scores of publications publish testaments to Moyer's incredible career, one thing most obituaries don't mention is that for many years, Bill Moyers was the head of the Puffin Foundation and got young journalists like me our first jobs.
I didn't know that he was an LBJ aide. Growing up, I remember him as a PBS Host, watching him with my grandparents and my parents in a very activist family.
In the early 2000s, on PBS, he was a beacon in those years of Bush's push for war and corporate greed. We watched him all the time in my household.
Once, I remember dating a very sophisticated woman who was way too smart for me. I suggested that we stay in and watch "Moyers and Company" one Friday evening.
She laughed at the idea and found it funny that my idea of an exciting Friday night was asking if her she wanted to watch PBS. But, it just seemed so natural to me, growing up in my household, that if you were dating someone, you'd want to be with them to watch the weekly Moyers and Company episode. Meeting with him years later, when he was helping line up a grant to get me a jump, was surreal.
He was a hero of mine, and he was so excited to shoot the shop with a younger reporter. And the down-home Texas humility you saw on TV was just who he was.
He was so nice to so many early-career reporters like me, and he worked so hard as the head of the Puffin Foundation to get funding so that young reporters could find jobs in public media.
When I was 24, he arranged a grant from the Puffin Foundation that funded my first job as a staff writer at In These Times; his grant launched my career and gave me the training that I have relied on for decades as a labor reporter.
Occasionally, I would email with Moyers about different news subjects and he always responded and treated what I had to say as important. It meant a lot to me.
We need folks like him who are dedicated to building public media. In his death, I hope we remember how hard Moyers fought to create a new generation of young reporters like me to continue the fight.
I hope that young reporters will watch his interviews for years to come. He was just a great guy who knew how to empathize with people.
At a time when the media is in crisis, we need more leaders like Bill Moyers to keep fighting to get resources to independent media. Bill Moyers helped many young reporters like me pay the bills, and I hope his memory is always a blessing.
