Press: David Takes On a Goliath

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These days Brinkley is trying to finish a book about Washington, D.C., during World War II, with the aid of his son Alan, 30, a teacher at Harvard and M.I.T. His other children: Joel, 28, a reporter at the Louisville Courier-Journal, who this year won a Pulitzer Prize for a series on Cambodian refugees; John, 24, a student at American University.

Brinkley, not eager to uproot his life in Washington with Second Wife Susan plans to commute to New York for a year and see if things work out. It is a big if that has network executives wondering: Can Brinkley, the son of a Wilmington, N.C. railway clerk, outdraw that rich, bad bunch from Dallas? Prime time will tell—or, as Edward R. Murrow, the granddaddy of the laconic news style, used to say, "Good night and good luck."