The Daily Nightly began on May 31, 2005. As Brian wrote in his first post it aims to provide a narrative of the broadcast day and a window into the editorial process at NBC Nightly News. Brian weighs in every weekday and NBC News correspondents and producers post regularly.
Brian Williams became the seventh anchor and managing editor in the history of NBC Nightly News on December 2, 2004. Read his full biography.
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An hour before dawn this morning, in a pouring rain, wounded Iraq war veteran Dan McKinney returned to his old law enforcement job at the Port of Miami, and received a hero's welcome. The many hugs, handshakes and warm wishes were a far cry from the reception he endured 37 years ago when he also returned injured from Vietnam, and was cursed by angry crowds. On tonight's broadcast, you'll get a chance to meet McKinney and hear from one of the many people at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), who took extraordinary steps to support and protect him this time around.
Nearly two years ago, the now 55-year-old McKinney was called up by the Army Reserves, and was sent to Iraq to train policemen. But while he was taking a lunch break at an Iraqi compound, a suicide bomber dressed as a policeman walked in the door and set off a deadly explosive. Two Americans were killed, and four were injured. McKinney suffered a severe abdominal injury. He would spend the next year and a half in treatment and rehabilitation facilities.
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Link to thisThe good thing about this job is that every so often you really win one. Far from the unpleasant scenes and long hours we sometimes face, a few of us spent a spectacular day boating across Florida Bay in search of roseate spoonbills. Those pink and white wading birds with their odd-shaped gray bills have chosen a remote island near the Florida Keys as their winter nesting site. Audubon scientists took us along to watch them count nests and eggs. The sun was high, and the water was as smooth as glass, making it a very nice day at the office.
On tonight's Nightly News broadcast, we'll show you some of the pictures from our trip. They're part of a report we've done on an increase in wading bird populations in the Florida Everglades. While many credit this increase to favorable weather conditions, some say it's in part due to a successful attempt by biologists and Everglades water managers to create better feeding and nesting conditions. Working together, they're trying to make sure that water is where it's needed, when it's needed. It hasn't always been that way.
Discuss (4 comments) Email this | Link to thisHAVANA - Tonight on Nightly News we'll take a look at the politically-complicated efforts to restore the Cuban home of famed American writer Ernest Hemingway. Reporting this story gave us rare access to the fascinating place known as Finca Vigia, or Lookout Farm, which sits on a hill overlooking Havana. Hemingway lived and worked there for 21 years, from 1939 to 1960, and it's where he finished "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and fully wrote "The Old Man and the Sea," for which he won both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize for Literature.
All of us in the NBC team were struck by how the house seems frozen in time, and feels as if Papa, himself, could stroll through the door at any moment. The walls are filled with his hunting trophies from around the world, including the head of an African Cape Buffalo. On the bathroom walls are the handwritten notes he would write every day recording his weight. The last entry was from July 24, 1960. He weighed 190 pounds then.
Discuss (3 comments) Email this | Link to thisHAVANA - While in Cuba on assignment to cover Fidel Castro's health, U.S.-Cuban relations and the politically complicated efforts to restore Ernest Hemingway's home (a story that will air on a future Nightly News broadcast), I took some time for a more personal mission and was quite moved by the goodwill of the people I met along the way.
My wife, who is Cuban-American, asked me to try to locate her childhood home in a village about two hours from Havana. Her family moved from there to the Cuban capital in 1960, after the revolution. She then emigrated to the United States alone in 1970, returning only once, in 1980, to retrieve her mother and two brothers during the Mariel boat lift. Quite understandably, her memory of the place had faded a bit.
Click here to read the rest of Mark's reporter's notebook.
Discuss (2 comments) Email this | Link to thisI had to smile this morning when I read that Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize. Yunus pioneered the concept of microcredit -- giving unsecured loans to poor people -- and he was the inspiration for a man we featured earlier this year on a Nightly News "Making a Difference" piece from the island of Samoa, in the South Pacific.
What might appear to be dry economic and social theory on paper is actually deeply moving when you see it in practice and witness the results -- as we were lucky enough to do this spring.
Our story featured Greg Casagrande, who was a hard-charging executive for Ford and Mazda before he gave it all up to chase his dream of eradicating poverty. After studying Yunus' principles, he used his own money to start up a loan program for women in impoverished Samoa.
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