MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — We’ve all been finding our own little ways to say thank you to WCCO-TV anchor Don Shelby, including CBS anchor Katie Couric.
While in town recently, she paid a fellow journalist the highest compliment, by interviewing him.
Couric: I’m sure your intellectual curiosity has motivated you all these years that you still, even at this point in your career, have a lot to learn?
Shelby: Oh incredible amounts to learn, especially today. Katie, I had to go back, when I undertook Project Energy, I had to go back and study physics, high school physics, college physics, chemistry. And I studied things that I never thought that I would study because I didn’t know them. We have to take that tough stuff and break it down and say this is what that means. I had no idea what it meant.
Couric: You had no idea what the tough stuff was, really, right?
Shelby: That’s exactly right, and so my learning curve in the last five years has been straight up. I think I’ve had to learn more in the last five years than I’ve had to learn in the previous 40.
Couric: Do you worry about the future of journalism?
Shelby: Yes, I worry about the future of journalism, because it is so scattered right now.
Couric: You also worry about people being a five miles wide and a quarter inch deep. I wonder about that, too. How superficial our knowledge will become because everything has become so truncated?
Shelby: And superficial is a bugaboo, because today depth is required more than ever before because issues are more and more complicated.
Couric: On a lighter note, what are you most excited about other than spending time with the grandchildren and your daughters?
Shelby: The hammock. I’ll spend a great deal of time in there, but you know what I’ll probably be doing, I’ll probably be thinking what was that Katie said today that I should be thinking about. I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking.
