Remembering Peter: He Was Blogging Before Blogging Was Cool

Do you remember Peter Jennings‘ e-mail preview? It arrived in my inbox every weekday afternoon, a couple hours before World News Tonight.

Here’s a Poynter story about the e-mail list, from February 2000. “Jennings is the only network anchor to be so closely tied through the Internet to his viewers,” the site says. It’s a process that he says has created a ‘wonderfully personal’ connectivity between the anchorman and his audience.”

“I think it is fair to say that Peter Jennings was, among other things, a trail blazer in ‘blogging’ before ‘blogging’ really existed,” a trusted e-mailer wrote this week. “His daily e-mail, archived daily at ABCNEWS.COM, was a huge hit — an authentic glimpse into his thinking and the decision-making at World News Tonight. It was, in everything but name, a ‘blog’…created years before other mainstream news personalities figured it out.”