Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 10, 1993 TAG: 9304100326
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE WERTS NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CATHERINE CRIER MOVES ON WITH ABC'S `20/20'
The fast track. That's where Catherine Crier's supposed to be. Why, she didn't pay any journalistic dues at all before CNN whisked her three years ago from a Dallas state court judgeship to the co-anchor slot on its showcase newscast.So what's the big deal? Crier was also the youngest elected judge in Texas when she ran for office in 1984 to displace a judge she wanted to retire. Prior to that, she had been Dallas County felony chief prosecutor in her 20s, before leaving for private civil litigation practice. And she was hardly more than a kid when she won two national championships in Arabian horse riding. (OK, so one of those was reserve national champion, the western-riding one.)
For somebody who's frequently accused of wearing blinders on that fast track to personal success - February's Spy magazine called her an "aloof and driven" woman who seeks to be "not a journalist, but a star" - Crier sure seems to deviate from the path a lot, to follow other trails.
Last fall she gave up her franchise-player status at CNN to become one of the pack of correspondents on ABC's "20/20." She left behind 2 1/2 hours of daily airtime, including her own issues forum "Crier & Company" and the heavy-hitting "Inside Politics" series, in favor of less-than-weekly reporting appearances. She's gone from live interviews with world leaders on a channel seen globally, to domestic magazine pieces on more personal issues.
Which could seem a curious change of course if you've got stars in your eyes.
"To be able to step back and be more analytical, to evaluate, to take a more in-depth look at a story," she said in her office at ABC, "was something I missed. That was something I was much more accustomed to, certainly, as a trial lawyer - you sometimes spend years even preparing a case and understanding all of the fine points and the nuances of a situation."
And though she loved the "adrenaline rush" of CNN's news-as-it-happens mode, she says she discovered "in talking to people, one of the concerns seems to be that information is delivered without enough context so that we all as viewers can make some sense of it, understand how a story affects us or what it means to the country."
But you also sense that Catherine Crier wants to be where the action is. She changed course in college from international law after "I made the mistake of starting to hang out at the courthouse and watching trials, and I knew that litigation was where I wanted to be."
She saw the bombs raining down on her CNN co-anchor Bernard Shaw two years ago in Baghdad, "and it made me want to get out and do just that sort of thing." And she has no interest in running for office again, because "I like reporting now," she says - "being the fly in the ointment."
Crier may be focused on her work (divorced from her former Dallas law partner, she claims no romance at the moment), but it hardly seems to define her life. When she talks about her career path or the network environment, her words are deliberately chosen and carefully metered.
Yet, she gabs at a gallop when you ask about her real life: about the fresh experience of living in New York (coming from Dallas and Atlanta, she loves walking everywhere from her Upper West Side home). About her beloved horse (Flamboyant, or "Beau," who waits outside Atlanta until she finds a suitable home for him here). About her family (she's reunited with her younger sister Cynthia, a New York architect).
At 38, Crier doesn't fit the mold of the network journalist, that's true.
So what? A mug on her desk bears the likeness of Winston Churchill - "my hero," because she admires his unique spirit. "I think we have become too homogenized, and we don't give ourselves permission to be outrageous, different," she enthuses. "The older I get, the freer I think I am becoming with that.