He’d regularly used his bully pulpit to blast President Barack Obama for not publicly showing his birth certificate and recently asserted that threats against him had escalated to the point where someone shot at his house. He’d even made an earlier, dramatic exit from CNN to run an Internet site focused on outer space.
So Lou Dobbs was going to have to work pretty hard to shock people when he took to the CNN airwaves Wednesday night.
Mission accomplished.
“The national media seldom surprises me, but obviously the interest is gratifying,” Dobbs, 64, chuckled in a phone interview Saturday afternoon, referring to the outpouring of coverage of his abrupt, high-profile leave-taking from the network where he’d appeared on-air for almost three decades. “And the number of people calling up even in the last 24 hours to offer me opportunities has just been incredible.”
Breaking his near silence of almost three days to speak with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dobbs said he’s made no decisions about his professional future. Doing so, he asserted, will take “weeks, probably months.” But the outspoken former host of CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” seemed largely at peace with his announcement on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that he was leaving both it and the cable network behind immediately.
“I wish it could have ended differently,” Dobbs said. “It’s a bittersweet moment for CNN and I to have to part ways. But I truly believe that it’s also a liberating moment for me and one in which I am going to focus on new perspectives, new opportunities and new directions. That is absolutely exhilarating.”
A CNN personality
The news caught nearly everyone from industry watchers and loyal viewers to some of the show’s guests by surprise.
Dobbs “introduces himself to me and says, ‘Well, this is a momentous day, right?’” said Jeffrey Lord, recalling the minutes leading up to his appearance on Wednesday’s show. The former Reagan White House political director chalked the comment up to it being Veterans Day — until Dobbs went on the air, live.
“All of a sudden, we realize he’s saying, in effect, ‘I’m leaving,’” said Lord, a day after he unexpectedly became the show’s last guest. “Every mouth in the room was hanging open. Everyone was astounded. Then this light goes on: This is what he meant by momentous.”
And that, acquaintances and former work associates suggest, is classic Dobbs.
“I just kind of had to smile when I read he’d done that,” said Bobbie Battista, who joined CNN as an anchor in 1981 and spent 23 years there. “I thought, ‘He’s smart. He’s taking control of the reins.’ I think he orchestrates a fair amount of what he does.”
Thus ended — at least for now — a lengthy, frequently tumultuous era at CNN involving one of the Atlanta-based cable giant’s first signature personalities.
CNN US president Jon Klein told the Washington Post on Thursday that, following weeks of discussion, he and Dobbs “both came to the conclusion that the mission of the network was different from the mission he wanted to pursue.”
That’s pretty much right on the money, Dobbs said.
“It’s not like there was some sort of epiphany, but especially in the last week or so, it became clear where we were headed,” he said about his “pleasant, friendly and professional” parting from the onetime upstart network he’d joined in 1980. “My role in the past six years has been advocacy journalism and it’s not one that I will ever give up. It’s not who I am. CNN has just been an amazing place for me to practice my craft over these many years and I understand their desire — and wish them the very best in their endeavor to — pursue whatever journalistic voice they feel is right for the network.”
The longtime anchor of “Moneyline” and former president of financial news network CNNfn, Dobbs was still known mostly as a business guy when his on-air persona took a decidedly populist turn around 2004. His increasingly opinionated, laser-like focus on such hot button issues as outsourcing of American jobs, illegal immigration and the Obama “birther” controversy garnered big ratings for “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” but also plenty of criticism for CNN, which promotes its “non-ideological” news coverage.
A coalition of Latino and liberal groups even launched a “Drop Dobbs” campaign aimed at getting him off the air.
Last month, Dobbs reported a shot had been fired at his Sussex, N.J., house, and, in comments made on his radio show, he seemed to link the physical attack to his various critics’ verbal ones.
“Everyone has their detractors, that’s part of being in the public arena,” Dobbs said. “If you speak truth to power, sometimes power doesn’t listen timidly or without responding. But I feel strongly and passionately about this country and the American people and I’m not one to sit on my hands or retreat from the public arena.”
Something bigger?
Where he advances to next is anyone’s guess — and everyone seems to have one. Dobbs said on Wednesday’s show that some “leaders in media, politics and business” had been urging him “to engage in constructive problem-solving, as well as to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day.”
That last part only helped to spur speculation about what other momentous shoe Dobbs might drop. Is he angling for a political run? A Democratic-held U.S. Senate seat is up for grabs in 2012 in his home state of New Jersey. Does he want a bigger radio presence? A job at Fox News?
“Fox will call,” predicted Rich Hanley, assistant professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University and an expert on television news. “Stoking anger toward enemies real and imagined drives cable news, and Dobbs has evolved into a master of that.”
Fox said last week that it hadn’t talked with Dobbs about joining either its top-rated news network or FBN, its recently-launched business channel. But then came word that Dobbs’s first prime time television interview since leaving CNN would be on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday and the speculation ratcheted up several more notches.
“I find it interesting that no one asks me if I’m joining ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ because I’m going to be on that [show] on Wednesday,” Dobbs quipped, just before turning serious about the Fox host who’d publicly taken up for him and his right to free speech on his own show. “Bill O’Reilly has been a defender and a friend and I’m delighted to appear on his show first. But I just don’t want to suggest I’ve made up my mind on anything.”
It seems not everyone who knows him awaits his decision with bated breath. A number of people who’ve worked with Dobbs over the years wouldn’t comment for this story, with one aptly summing up the most commonly heard off-the-record sentiment: It’s always all about Lou.
To be sure, he has his fans. Dobbs’ staff reacted “like they were at their own funeral” during that final show, Lord said
“He’s a taskmaster,” said Dan Tice, a former CNN business producer who worked in Atlanta on segments that sometimes wound up on Dobbs’ New York-originating shows. “I thought he leaned toward criticism that was a little bit sharper than it needed to be. But, at the same time, it was correct. It was sharp criticism, but with 20/20 hindsight you could see that it was correct.”
On balance, Dobbs seems to feel he got things right.
“There’s no question I was a demanding boss, but there’s also no question I was a protective one,” Dobbs said, pointing proudly to the friendships formed over years with staff on his show. “We measure our relationship in decades, which is unheard of in this business.”
Part of what could make Dobbs intimidating was also what made him such an intriguing figure at CNN, Battista said. Not content to just be an on-air personality, he became a part of management at the fast-growing company as well, rising from vice president/managing editor of business news to senior vice president of CNN.
“I admire him because he buttered both sides of the bread,” said Battista, whose recent post-CNN gigs have included hosting a program on Retirement Living Television and anchoring for “Onion News Network,” the video arm of the satirical newspaper. “He’s one of those people who’s very good at consolidating his power inside and outside the network. You can’t not admire that ability in people.”
But Dobbs also sometimes clashed with CNN management, most notably in 1999, when the network switched from “Moneyline” to coverage of President Bill Clinton speaking in Colorado about the Columbine High School massacre. Dobbs made sure his viewers knew he didn’t agree with the decision.
It was a breach of protocol that stunned many at CNN and likely the final straw in his deteriorating relationship with then-network president Rick Kaplan. Dobbs left the next month to invest in and become chairman of Space.com, a web site dedicated to news about outer space.
A momentous move, it perplexed many people. Yet some suggest Dobbs might have taken note of the hugely lucrative dot-com bubble he heretofore had been only covering and wanted a bigger role for himself.
“It didn’t seem like a natural transition,” Battista said. “I remember thinking, ‘This must be purely a business decision.’”
Within two years, though, Kaplan was gone, and Dobbs was back at CNN hosting “Moneyline,” which had seen its ratings fall 25 percent in his absence.
And while many wonder where Dobbs will go in the future, some suggest history might repeat itself.
It would be classic Dobbs, they say. If management at the top changes, who’s to say “that Lou won’t test the waters with new management,” Tice said. “He left before and came back. I don’t put it past him.”
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