While 60 Minutes ep Jeff Fager wrote the show’s 50th anniversary book, Fifty Years of 60 Minutes, he wasn’t the original author assigned to the project.
Three sources tell the New York Times Fager only took over the project after clashing with the original author Richard Zoglin. The Times reports:
After having completed roughly a dozen interviews in 2015, Mr. Zoglin was summoned to meet with Mr. Fager, who told the writer that he was focusing too much on the negative. Specifically, Mr. Fager expressed concern that Mr. Zoglin had asked his interview subjects about the treatment of women in the 60 Minutes workplace, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal matters. Mr. Fager also asked Mr. Zoglin why he had brought up the rocky tenure of Katie Couric, a onetime correspondent for the show and former CBS News anchor who left the network on bad terms.
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The book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, which is a division of CBS Corp., said Zoglin “decided he didn’t like being a writer for hire. At the same time, Jeff Fager, who had been with ‘60 Minutes’ for decades and lived through some of its most dramatic moments, was asked to be the author for the project.”