Molly Ivins January 22

Carole Kneeland, the finest television journalist in Texas and easily one of the best of her generation, is dying — a matter of days at most. Although this is heartbreaking for all who know and love her, to the wider world, she leaves a legacy that stands in proud defiance of all the cheap, easy cynicism about what is the most easily dismissed of all forms of journalism: local TV news.

"If it bleeds, it leads" is supposed to be the motto of local TV news. Kneeland, who had been a superb TV reporter, took over as news director at KVUE/Channel 24 in Austin nine years ago, and she led the station to rethink its definition of news.

Coverage of crime dropped dramatically as Kneeland insisted that her reporters find news that impacted people's lives rather than just titillating them. And KVUE's gradually became the top-rated news program in Austin. To make quality journalism a ratings hit is something that many people, even those in TV journalism, believe is impossible. But Kneeland did it for nine years, winning innumerable awards and national recognition along the way.

At KVUE, crime stories have to meet the following criteria: Is there an immediate threat to public safety? Is there a threat to children? Do viewers need to take action? Is there a significant community impact? Is it a crime-prevention effort?

Although deliberately de-emphasizing crime coverage was Kneeland's best-known innovation, there were other important contributions as well. She introduced "truth tests" for political advertising, taking political ads and "deconstructing" them on the air for accuracy. Because so much of the impact of political ads lies in clever use of video footage, seeing these ads analyzed on TV enables viewers to see how they are being manipulated more effectively than print analysis can. Other stations and newspapers around the country copied KVUE's "truth tests," and they are now a standard part of election coverage.

As a newsroom manager, Kneeland introduced ideas and procedures that were almost revolutionary in the business. In a recent interview with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, she said: "I had observed managers who weren't as in touch with people in the field as they could be. I knew I wanted to bring grass roots, out-in-the-field thinking into the newsroom. I attacked two things when I first arrived at KVUE: logistics and, the bigger picture, the newsroom culture. ... That push for fairness made me want to establish a culture where information and ideas come from the ground up and then get acted on. I wanted our newsroom to be a democracy." She instituted a system of team decision-making that is nothing short of remarkable.

Do you wonder that the people who worked for her loved her? Her emphasis on training both reporters and producers has made a KVUE credential on a resume pure gold.

The only other TV journalist in Kneeland's class in Texas is the legendary Marty Haag of WFAA/Channel 8 in Dallas; Kneeland was WFAA's capitol bureau chief for 10 years. Haag himself said: "Once I was asked to name the best journalism schools in the country.

Well, I said, one certainly has to include Carole Kneeland University in the top five. That was not a flippant answer. I meant it. Few leaders have left such an indelible mark on young journalists."

Kneeland had two strikes against her when she started in journalism: She was real short (5-foot-1) and real cute (just as pretty as a speckled pup). People who used to see her on television in Houston, Corpus Christi or Dallas were apt to assume at first that she got her job by being so good-looking. "Blonde" and "airhead" are practically synonymous when it comes to TV reporters.

Kneeland was so good-looking, in fact, that she once competed in the Washington state Miss America Pageant — and won Miss Congeniality, about which her friends teased her for years. But she also graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Washington. Her entire professional career was in Texas, where she soon became a genuinely legendary reporter.

Ask former Gov. Bill Clements if Kneeland was a cream puff. Her questioning of him at news conferences was like watching a great matador take on a bull; people used to come from all over the Capitol just to watch. In a famous performance in 1987, she was so persistent that she got Clements to admit his role in paying off athletes at Southern Methodist University — on camera.

Kneeland also recorded former Agriculture Commissioner Reagan Brown sticking his arm into a fire ant mound for her camera — footage that helped convince the people of Texas that the man was too dumb to hold office. And when Brown denied reports that he had referred to Booker T. Washington as that "great black nigger," guess who had film of him doing just that?

Kneeland and her camerawoman Paula McCarter were an awesome political reporting team. The tiny Kneeland and the taller McCarter, who was twice pregnant in those years, would wade into the worst media scrums without flinching, and they always wound up within camera-shot of the source. On election nights, during those long waits while returns trickled in, Kneeland could go on camera and "fill" flawlessly, off the top of her head, with pertinent information about the candidates, the race and the voters. She was the best.

To note that Kneeland was smart, pretty and just a darling still doesn't begin to convey what a delightful human being she is. "Oh, Carole, you're so together," her friends used to tease her in chorus. Of course, she was just as subject to the occasional foul-up as anyone else, and no one enjoyed telling those stories more than Kneeland.

One much-relished tale involved the time Kneeland showed up late for a news conference. She flew up to the source, a dignified advertising director, scrabbling in her purse for notebook and pen and apologizing simultaneously. She located the pen, and as she kept talking and searching for her notebook, she noticed a very odd expression on the man's face as he focused on the hand waving the pen. She had pulled out not a pen but a tampon. Neither of them actually died of embarrassment, but it was a close-run thing.

Kneeland has fought valiantly against breast cancer for eight years, and now it is almost over. She is 49. Her wonderful parents, Lorraine and Sandy Kent, are with her, as is her husband, Dave McNeely, political columnist for the Austin American-Statesman.

The Carole Kneeland Endowment for Television Journalism is being established to carry on Kneeland's work in making TV news a better and more significant resource in people's lives. The address is 1907 North Lamar, Austin, Texas, 78705.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. You may write to her care of this newspaper.

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