David Muir gets cunty in off-air, behind-the-scenes video

Everything you want to know about ABC’s Gen X Walter Cronkite. by

Lesley M. M. Blume

Photographs by

Gasper Tringale

News anchor David Muir knew he wanted to be a journalist by the time he hit double digits. Around fifth grade, he began broadcasting from inside a cardboard box in his family’s living room in Syracuse, New York. Soon he used his allowance to buy a cassette recorder at RadioShack and began to interview his sister’s teenage friends. Fast-forward three decades and his interview subjects have a tad more gravitas—Barack Obama, Tim Cook, and Bill Gates, to name a few. Since he became the anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, last September, the broadcast has edged out its competitors in ratings, placing Muir in the same pantheon as his newsroom heroes Diane Sawyer and Peter Jennings. Now that he’s been at the helm for one year, Muir talks about life as a new breed of evening anchor, his embarrassing dearth of real vices, and tweeting during commercial breaks.

HE IS “Dr. Muir” now. Earlier this year his alma mater Ithaca College (he was class of ‘95) gave him an honorary doctorate.

BUT DON’T call him “doctor”—at least not in public. “Here in New York, people will probably want ‘scrips,’ ” he says.

AS A teenager, he spent his vacations working at WTVH-TV 5, the local CBS affiliate in Syracuse. “They had a growth chart on the wall on a doorway in the newsroom,” he recalls. “When I would come in on school breaks, they would march me over and measure how much I had grown.” (He’s now five feet eleven inches.)

THE HISTORICAL event he wishes he could have covered: “D-day, because of the incredible bravery and sacrifice. Of course, I would have been terrified.”

HIS BIGGEST adrenaline surges come during interviews just before he drops an H-bomb question: “I’m sitting across from Mitt Romney, and I know the next question is going to be about the rate he paid on his taxes.”

HE HAS no plans for a sign-off line, such as Walter Cronkite’s famous “And that’s the way it is.” “There’s something about a sign-off that seems predictable,” he says. “I just say whatever comes to my mind, to the pleasure and horror of the control room, I’m sure.”

HE TWEETS to viewers on set during commercial breaks with “the hope that people will think that I’m like them. Their anchor should reflect the times.” As of now, @DavidMuir has more than 200,000 followers.

HE HAS a signature selfie face in pictures with fans: three-quarters toward the camera, with a slightly pouty smile. “My head always looks three times the size” of everyone else’s, he says.

HE WOULD like to assure viewers that his head isn’t actually three times as big as theirs. It’s just the angle, he says. (He’s usually in the foreground.)

DESPITE BEING comfortable online, he gets a lot of his daily news in print, from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and others: “I still like the physicality of papers.”

LIKE A real New Yorker, he takes the subway to work every day.

HE HAS a very specific office soundtrack. “There are Radiohead days; there are Coldplay days. My assistants love the Chet Baker days.”

HE BINGE-WATCHES House of Cards and was obsessed with Mad Men, which reminded him of his childhood in Syracuse.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3TmqOorZ6csm%2BvzqZmraCimq6le5BubW9qYGWFbrDAr6CdZZ2qtrN5xp6rrGWTqru1xYyipWanlpt6orXRZpmeoJmjsW7Ax55krJuVo7K0edWim56n