Bob Woodruff

I bow to no one in my well-documented disdain for the journalistic value of parachuting anchors into hot spots--have you seen my tape of Dan Rather in Soweto?--where the usual practice for the "bigfoot" is to ask "What's the mood here?" and then to stand up in front of some picturesque location to play reporter. That doesn't seem to be what Bob Woodruff was doing when he was seriously injured over the weekend. He was out in an Iraqi army vehicle, trying to experience what Iraqi troops do on the ground, when an IED hit his vehicle, injuring himself and his cameraperson. Woodruff hardly qualifies as a bigfoot; he's had the anchoring job for a matter of weeks. Two things seem clear to me from this incident. One, according to the AP report, body armor saved Woodruff's life. That must come as a comfort to the troops who don't yet have enough of the stuff. Two, though an emailer to TV Newswer thinks the subject is premature for outside speculation, there must be discussions going on deep and high at ABC News about leaving Elizabeth Vargas, Woodruff's co-anchor, in charge of WNT by herself. The network, by opting for a man-woman format familiar to local-news viewers for eons, was clearly not opting to be the first broadcast to have a solo female anchor, yet that's the prospect that may now confront them....