20 Questions: Lou Dobbs

Students who worry they'll never use their college degree in the real world can take heart from the experience of Lou Dobbs. He majored in economics and wound up as anchor of CNN's "Moneyline," the cable network's evening financial news program. Dobbs claims to have made broadcasting his career choice because "it looked like a great deal of fun."

He began broadcasting in towns in the Southwest where the audience consisted of local residents he would meet after work in the grocery store. "They would tell you precisely what they thought--or didn't think--of your reporting," he recalls. Dobbs insists that he occasionally refers to videotape as "film" to make certain he's still in touch with his generation of television broadcasters.

Dobbs was working in Seattle in January 1980 when CNN called and offered the "to-tally unknown anchor focusing primarily on business" a full-time financial news position. Dobbs was skeptical. He didn't have much faith in the network's future, but was swayed by Ted Turner's salesmanship.

Although audiences for television financial news remain small compared with those of network news broadcasts, the number of viewers is rising. Some observers credit this to a greater awareness of economic issues and to the popularity of mutual funds. Last year CNN announced it was going to beef up its business coverage by launching a new network. CNNFN, which programs 12 daily hours of financial news, debuted in January. Dobbs, who's also a CNN executive vice president, oversaw the expansion. Will audiences watch more financial news? Dobbs says that he's investing "a lot of Ted Turner's money" to find out.

Warren Kalbacker met with Dobbs before and after recent tapings of "Money-line." According to Kalbacker, "Lou Dobbs the reporter did have plenty to say about the economy, the stock market and the media business. Lou Dobbs the Turner executive seemed especially pleased about the year-end performance of another division. He reminded me, 'My company won the World Series.'"

1.

Playboy: Can we date television business coverage from 1971, when NBC's bow-tied Irving R. Levine began to report on economic topics?

Dobbs: Around that time. Or really around the time of OPEC. Then you saw business news only when a petrochemical plant blew up, when Wall Street defrauded investors or when OPEC decided to put the squeeze on the West in terms of oil prices and supply. Ted Turner mandated business news on CNN. I didn't give this network much of a chance, but I thought it was worth doing. We put Moneyline on simultaneously with the network start-up in 1980. Much to our surprise and delight we had viewership.

2.

Playboy: Mergers and layoffs don't require a whole lot of explanation. Surely you're aware that people can tune in to Moneyline and discover their pink slips are on the way.

Dobbs: Absolutely true. For the past four and a half years I've been reporting some bad news. Corporate layoffs are running at a pace very close to the recession of 1990--1991. Almost as troubling is that our political leaders haven't come up with any solutions about how to create an environment that has greater security and stability. Productivity is a great thing, but when it comes at the cost of questionable benefits and questionable savings for retirement, we have to figure out a way to do better. And that better way won't come from government or serendipity. It will ultimately come from the marketplace.

3.

Playboy: Set the daily performance of the stock market in the larger context of American culture.

Dobbs: Now, with some 50 million people investing in the market indirectly through their mutual funds or 401(k)s, the market has personal relevancy as a barometer of net worth. But it also has an almost ritualistic, transcendent importance. It suggests that things are either going well or that there's reason for concern, fear or anxiety. The market becomes a talisman for where we are in our economy on a given day and perhaps where we are in terms of our material life. It suggests the broader condition of our lives. The Dow is great, honey, and so are you.

4.

Playboy: Would you care to step out of your anchor's role and gaze into the crystal ball?

Dobbs: One pitfall for a journalist who covers business is that you sometimes confuse being a journalist with being a market expert. But I'm definitely a bull. My sense is that this market will go higher. The economy is strong because of restructuring and the renewed productivity of our workforce. There's so much liquidity out there. There's little in the way of an alternative investment to equities right now.

5.

Playboy: Financial journalists rely on clichés to describe stock-market action. Do you have a favorite?

Dobbs: "Rallying" would be my favorite. My least favorite and the most confounding term is "profit taking." The damn stock got sold. Despite my absolute stricture, I find myself using it at least once every two weeks. It's one of those expressions you just can't seem to get away from.

6.

Playboy: Television financial news often depicts a reporter talking outside a corporation's headquarters. What's your idea of a good visual in a field where dramatic pictures are few and far between?

Dobbs: One of the most effective 30 minutes of television I've ever seen was Ross Perot's performance in the 1992 presidential campaign. He stood there with his flip charts, looking like the IBM salesman he once was, and made two 15-minute presentations, one on chickenman Bill Clinton and one on voodooman George Bush. My other favorite business visual is the face of Myron Kandel, when he gives us the perspective of his 35 years of business journalism without the benefit of other pictures.

7.

Playboy: Has anyone ever really explained a derivative well? The treasurer who brought Orange County to bankruptcy by investing in derivatives might have benefited from a good definition.

Dobbs: He may have explained the hazards of derivatives better than any of us. We haven't done a very good job, on television or in print. I suspect that's because those who invented derivatives and trade them and seek your money for them don't want you to understand them too well.

8.

Playboy: Do you pride yourself on remembering a huge number of ticker symbols?

Dobbs: Not at all. I've never understood the fascination for ticker symbols. Most of the tickers people watch on television or in a brokerage work with a 15-minute delay. They're for people who have nothing better to do. My advice is, Get a life.

9.

Playboy: In October 1987 you covered the stock market crash. Are you planning your coverage of the next big one?

Dobbs: The question I will be asking is: "Isn't this the crash we said couldn't happen again?" There are new safeguards and restraints on selling on downticks. But I recall vividly in 1987 that people said we could never have another crash like 1929 because the market was different, the economy was far more complex and there were safety nets for each institution in the financial services industry. And the next thing I'm reporting is a 508-point crash. If I had been clever enough to have anticipated that crash, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We had warnings from the Tokyo market. So it didn't take a genius to suggest we set up live trucks outside the New York Stock Exchange the day we did. The second question I would ask is, "Why am I still working?"

10.

Playboy: Japanese geishas verse themselves in economic news in order to converse knowledgeably with their executive clients. Is there a lesson there?

Dobbs: I have never had the pleasure of an extended conversation with a geisha, but I'm told they are the epitome of social grace and carry on terrific conversations. That seems like a wonderful mixture. Commerce, like music, is an international language.

11.

Playboy: Given the worldwide presence of CNN, entrepreneurs in former communist nations are tuning in. How does Moneyline play in countries that are new to capitalism?

Dobbs: Apparently very well. The editors of a Russian business weekly even suggested to me that CNN was responsible for much of the changing attitudes about capitalism. I went by myself to what they call the commodity exchange in Moscow. The exchange was part electronic transfer, part open outcry, but altogether primitive, with the wares actually right in front of the seller. When I talk about commodities here, I mean commodities. Shirts, for example. A fellow walked up to me and said "Lou Dobbs, CNN." Because I was the host of Moneyline and he assumed I had millions of dollars of disposable income, he wanted to sell me a Soviet transport aircraft. He had a brochure on this thing. It was priced at $5 million and he offered it to me for $1.6 million. A terrific discount. He couldn't understand my disinterest, which I explained to him was, first of all, economic. Forget that I had no use for it.

12.

Playboy: You reported from the Middle East during the Gulf war. Do you compete for scoops with Peter Arnett?

Dobbs: Peter is an old friend. And where there's shooting, I certainly don't want to infringe on his being there. I ended up in Kuwait and Iraq because I thought the Gulf war was about oil. Foolish me. My producer and crew, though we did not know it at the time, were the first Americans into the Port of Kuwait after the military secured it. We actually broke the story of the release of the hostages from Iraq. I had the distinction of being the first one into the Kuwait stock exchange after the Iraqis. They had absolutely trashed the place. The Iraqis were resentful and jealous of everything the small Kuwaiti population had amassed.

13.

Playboy: Explain the transformation of some corporate chieftains from graysuited managers into celebrities.

Dobbs: It's a phenomenon that's occurred over the past 15 years, and it's been concurrent with some great scandals. Beyond the Ivan Boeskys and the Martin Siegels and the Charles Keatings, there are good guys such as Bob Allen at AT&T, Henry Kravis at KKR and Walt Wriston at Citibank. On balance it's a healthy thing. I'd rather we look to the accomplishments of a Bill Gates than raise a rock star to celebrity for a week and a half. They both have a role, but the more enduring and substantial story is the business leader's.

14.

Playboy: You recently introduced a story about microbreweries as "something for trendies and Generation Xers." Did we detect a hint of a sneer in that intro? We've heard you managed to parlay your affinity for brew into a few extra dollars during your college days.

Dobbs: I like some of the microbrewery beers tremendously. But the idea of their becoming fads? My story goes back to ancient history, when Coors wasn't available in the East. It's a marketing story and it's also a story about a poor boy from Idaho compensating. Most of my classmates would go through about 20 types of wine, which I never could comprehend. But I was a gourmet in terms of Coors beer. I would bring back as many cases as I could in the backseat of my car and make $5 profit on each case. Great instruction about free markets and supply and demand, which I tried to fill as best I could for a couple of years. The American system does work, by God. I'm sure I spent the profits on more beer.

15.

Playboy: You majored in economics in college. What drew Lou Dobbs to the dismal science?

Dobbs: I'd never been exposed to economics in my life until I got to Harvard. I went to a debate at MIT between Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman. For me, Friedman was the first person to draw the concept of the interdependency of economic and political systems. Samuelson didn't do that. Friedman's books were much shorter, though they were dense. I was impressionable. And being a poor boy, the concept of money sounded interesting to me. The fact that I went into business journalism came down to one thing: I was one of the few reporters whose eyes didn't glaze over when I went to a budget hearing at the city council. Though that may be overstating the case.

16.

Playboy: Tell us a true tale of Lou Dobbs, cub reporter.

Dobbs: I was chasing drug dealers and murderers through the deserts in Arizona. I turned down jobs offering substantially more money because I had so much fun following the DEA across the border into Mexico on raids with the federales. Driving home one night I heard a call on my scanner for assistance in a citrus grove. I wheeled the car around and drove right into the middle of this 50-acre grove. A bleeding man stumbled toward me. I put him in the car and he said his buddies were also being attacked. I was confronted by a dozen so-called fruit tramps. I suddenly realized I was in a bad situation. I was there before the police were. Just as they had me surrounded--two of them had knives--the sweetest voice in the world rang out, "Boys, this is the Yuma County sheriff's department, is there a problem?"

17.

Playboy: Huge mergers continue to occur in the media business. Will financial journalists be forced to pull their punches when they cover their corporate parents?

Dobbs: I don't think so, based on my experience. I'd be glad to talk about Disney taking over ABC. [Laughs] But with all these mergers, when you concentrate so much media and there are very few people--no matter how good and well-intentioned these people are--bigness will still be power. There's no other way to describe it or to think about it. With that much power in the hands of a few there will be the potential for abuse. I've worked for Ted Turner for 15 and a half years and never once has he sought to shape coverage, to dictate coverage or to question coverage. So long as Ted Turner is here, I'm confident that will remain the case. The problem in talking about your boss is that there's always a danger of being obsequious, or, as we say in television terms, sucking up.

18.

Playboy: Would you care to suck up to Ted Turner in this space?

Dobbs: Let me suck up. Some years ago Ted did an editorial on the movie Gandhi. He had done one previously on Taxi Driver. Now, the idea of an editorial from the chairman is not what we created CNN for. I finally made the decision and I told my wife, "Babe, I'm going to call Ted and tell him how I feel and how a lot of other people here feel. This will probably be my last week at the company." So I called him at the Plantation on a Friday night. I said, "Ted, I need to talk to you about these editorials of yours. This isn't what we're about. They're not appropriate." I thought he might explode, but instead he invited me into his office Monday morning. So I walked in, fully expecting that I'd simply had a weekend's forbearance on being fired. We talked for almost an hour about commentary and editorials. He sat there and listened. He didn't say that he wouldn't do it again, but he said he'd think about it. And that was the last time he did it. That's my sucking-up tale. People never give Ted credit for being a listener. That's about as obsequious as I can get.

19.

Playboy: When the merger between Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting was announced, Ted Turner appeared on Moneyline. Was he crying over all the money he stood to make from the deal?

Dobbs: There may have been a little of that. He was crying. All of the countless hours that Ted had spent with investment bankers and lawyers would be enough to make any of us cry. I think after a grueling day and taking a look back at his life, what he was doing hit him. Ted is an emotional man. Those were real tears. I started to say something to the viewers because they probably were able to see the tears. As I did, I choked up and decided this was a subject I wasn't going to approach until I could control myself. For many of us, CNN was our first opportunity to be journalists, and we put energy, blood, sweat, tears and egos into it. To see it change was emotional.

I patted Ted on the arms when those tears started to well up. I tried to lighten him up by telling him a Warren Buffett joke. I told him the last time Buffett was on Moneyline he was asked for a mike check and instead of the normal test, counting out "one, two, three," without breaking expression Warren counted, "1 million, 2 million, 3 million." Ted found it amusing, but apparently not amusing enough to hold back the tears.

20.

Playboy: You played football at Harvard. Explain the Ivy League version of the sport to the rest of us.

Dobbs: I played not very well and not very long. My wife, who's a graduate of the University of Oregon, refers to Harvard as a girl's football team, which I think is unkind. A few years ago I took my number two son and some friends to a Harvard-Army game. At the end of the first quarter the score was, much to my surprise, 14--0, Harvard. I stood up and said in all seriousness, "Now we're leaving." I was trying to get my son interested in Harvard. By halftime the score was 28-28. By the end of the day it was Army 56, Harvard 28. But I had my revenge last year because Oregon was drubbed by Penn State.