Preview -- World News Tonight 08/06/01
Aug. 6 -- Peter Jennings is on the road today. Charles Gibson anchors the broadcast and senior producer Tom Nagorski has our preview.
Good Afternoon.
Sometimes we come to work pretty sure we know what the lead story will be. Sometimes we're pretty certain the night before. As in last night — when we heard that Tropical Storm Barry was threatening to become Hurricane Barry at about the time it was scheduled to make land. We dispatched reporter Steve Osunsami to follow the storm's path. And we wondered what other components we might add to our storm coverage.
So how's Barry doing? Suffice to say that when Steve checked in from southern Alabama this afternoon he said, "Let me put it to you this way: I've got the wipers on 'mist.'"
Not to diminish the storm entirely — Barry did dump buckets of rain in Florida overnight — but this is no lead story. The lead is likely to be some combination of news about the job market, and a portrait of the national well-being. The latter is the latest disclosure from the 2000 census, and it tells us that in the 1990s Americans won almost unprecedented gains in income, education and quality of housing. At the same time we learn about the costs of that prosperity. Michele Norris has the story tonight. As for the job picture, it's a reminder — in the beginning of this next decade — that a lot of people are not sharing in the wealth. Business correspondent Betsy Stark will have that.
The other news tonight includes Bill Clinton's whopper of a book deal, Yasser Arafat's letter to Washington, the computer nemesis "Code Red II" and a final farewell to the National Football League star Korey Stringer.
Next we begin a series we're calling The Mystery of Memory — a range of stories on the subject of remembering. Erin Hayes' piece tonight opens with a tornado bearing down on the camera, and this puzzle: "If you saw this coming your way tomorrow morning, chances are you'd have a very accurate memory of it, for a very long time. So why can't you remember where you parked your car?" It's a fascinating piece.
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