TV journalist, Meet the Press moderator
NEW YORK - Veteran TV journalist Garrick Utley, whose far-ranging career included anchoring duties as well as reporting from more than 70 countries, has died of cancer at 74, NBC said Friday.
Utley began at NBC News in 1963, and for three decades he handled a wide variety of assignments. Early on, he reported from Vietnam on the escalating conflict. In later years, he moderated Meet the Press.
In between, Utley anchored Weekend Today and the Sunday Nightly News, as well as two different news magazines in two different decades with four different titles.
“I may have been the only person at NBC News who did every type of programming as host or anchor,” he toldThe Associated Press in 1993, adding that his versatility may have led to the network taking him for granted. “There’s a risk in being the utility infielder.”
That was shortly after he had left NBC to be the chief foreign correspondent for ABC News. He reported for CNN from 1997-2002.
In recent years, he was a senior fellow and professor of broadcasting and journalism at the State University of New York, Oswego.
In 2000, he published a memoir, You Should Have Been Here Yesterday: A Life Story in Television News.
Standing 6 feet 6 inches tall, Utley was known for his courtly and knowledgeable on-air manner. An opera buff, for a time he hosted PBS’ Live From the Met.
Born in Chicago in 1939, Utley was the son of Clifton and Frayn Utley, two pioneering journalists on local TV as well as other Chicago media outlets.
He is survived by his wife, Gertje, an art historian.
Arkansas, Pages 14 on 02/22/2014