Eloquent Ellerbee

Melissa Schorr

Tuesday, Nov. 3, 1998 | 10:06 a.m.

Linda Ellerbee may have stopped writing her weekly columns, but that doesn't mean she's stopped voicing her opinions.

"I don't miss it at all," says Ellerbee, 54, the former network news anchor known for her irreverent wit, who became a feminist icon for her rise up the network news career ladder. "I've got too many other forums to state my opinions."

Those forums include: the television specials produced by her company, Lucky Duck Productions; another memoir and a children's book series in the works; her weekly spot writing and hosting the children's TV news show "Nick News"; and speaking out on the lecture circuit, which will bring her to UNLV's Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall Thursday to speak on "surviving a changing world."

The last time Ellerbee spoke in Las Vegas was in 1994 at UNLV.

But she recalls that her very first job in television was here as well. Ellerbee served as a production assistant for 13 weeks in 1968 on a local late- night talk show called "The Las Vegas Show" that went up against Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show."

The ill-fated show was canceled after 13 weeks.

"I lived in the Hacienda," Ellerbee recalls. "It was a strange existence."

After that, her career path included stints as a reporter in Alaska, and as a writer for the Associated Press in Dallas. Eventually, Ellerbee worked her way up to the networks, becoming an anchor on "Weekend" and "NBC News Overnight" before leaving the business in 1986.

Since then, she has written two books. Her most recent, a 1991 autobiography called, "Move On: Adventures in the Real World," was named, she says, after a song from a favorite Stephen Sondheim musical, "Sunday in the Park With George." She also wrote a 1986 bestseller which has become an industry classic, "And So It Goes: Adventures in Television." That book was named after her trademark sign-off, which, she admits, she "stole" from her "Weekend" co-anchor, Lloyd Dobyns.

Ellerbee's works-in-progress include a new children's book series called "Get Real," due next year, involving two 12-year-old girls she describes as "a young Murphy Brown and a young Mary Richards," and a third, as-yet-untitled autobiography in her trilogy, which will take her to the present, addressing her bout with breast cancer seven years ago.

Her survival -- and subsequent outspokenness on the topic -- landed her on recent covers of TV Guide and People magazine to highlight the disease for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

"I am always delighted when the media gives attention to breast cancer, although it makes you want to know if women get cancer in months other than October," she quips, pointing out the barrage of attention the disease gets this time of the year.

Clearly, her famed forthrightness is alive and well, too. "No one ever accused me of not speaking my mind," she says.

But that's one reason, she says, why she and her peers were able to raise awareness of the deadly disease.

"So many women my age started getting it, and we were always a noisy generation," she says. "As long as women were willing to suffer in silence and die politely, not much was getting done. We have literally changed the course of the disease."

Still, she says, the battle isn't over.

"We have to put an end to this, there are simply far too many people dying. We can't sit back and say, 'we'll solve this one day.' I want it solved ... name the day," she abruptly demands. "Name the day."

When she is not speaking out on breast cancer, Ellerbee is producing various specials for Lifetime, HBO and A&E.

The project she is most excited is an upcoming 12-hour HBO miniseries on the women's movement, scheduled to air in 2000, called "Oh, What a Time It Was." Ellerbee will be the executive producer, along with Whoopi Goldberg and Diane Keaton.

"There's a feeling that a lot of our history has been lost or misinterpreted," Ellerbee says. "It was a time filled with the rush of possibilities. It would be wonderful to tell those stories."

The bulk of her time is devoted to writing and hosting the Emmy Award-winning "Nick News." Now in its eighth year on Nickelodeon, the weekly magazine show interprets the news for children.

What has Ellerbee found to be the biggest difference between addressing adult viewers and young viewers?

"It's not that you dumb it down or simplify it," Ellerbee explains. "But you do have to put it in a context. The regular evening news presumes prior knowledge, it's catching you up on the latest on a topic you already know. With children, you are starting without that, so we are forever having to make the stories longer to explain them."

For example, the possible impeachment proceedings of President Clinton invoked a special anxiety for children, who hadn't experienced this happening before with Richard Nixon, and didn't know what removing a president would mean for the country.

"It dawned on me -- to them, this wasn't just President Clinton," she says, "he was the president -- the only president they remember."

Though enthusiastic about providing news to children, Ellerbee says she worries "constantly" that the emphasis on TV may not encourage young people to read newspapers, as well. That's why, she says, "I am always holding a newspaper from a different town. I want kids to know -- really interesting things come out of newspapers."

Interesting things, for sure -- such as the still-passionate, always welcome opinions of Linda Ellerbee.