TV's greatest newscasters, real and surreal

Plus, Lance Reddick, Farleigh Dickinson, Cody Bellinger, the Lakers, Gary Sandy and how can you resist Jan Smithers?

I started things off Friday with this tweet.

Jon Weisman @jonweisman

Who would be on your Mount Rushmore of television newspersons?

Many responses came in, with many good suggestions, proving that we’re going to need a much bigger Mt. Rushmore. (Or maybe we shouldn’t carve into sacred land to begin with.) So let’s break out of the metaphor and see what we’ve got.

National candidates

• David Brinkley

• Tom Brokaw

• Katie Couric

• Walter Cronkite

• Linda Ellerbee

• Chet Huntley

• Gwen Ifill

• Peter Jennings

• Ted Koppel

• Jim Lehrer

• Rachel Maddow

• Edward R. Murrow

• Dan Rather

• Bernard Shaw

• Barbara Walters

I’m particularly proud of this 2007 interview I conducted with KTLA’s historic newscasters Stan Chambers and Hal Fishman.

Local candidates

• Stan Chambers

• Jerry Dunphy

• Hal Fishman

• Pat Harvey

• Chuck Henry

• Kelly Lange

• Christine Lund

• Jess Marlow

• Tritia Toyota

• Colleen Williams

If you add together the names above, you get 25 — which makes me think of a major-league baseball roster. (We’ll make the 10 local names the pitching staff.) I’ll put this team up against any.

Not to be forgotten, though …

The genius of Ted Baxter

A few fictional submissions also came in, namely the Killer Bs of Ted Baxter, Kent Brockman and Ron Burgundy. With comedy respect to the other two, this prize goes to Baxter in a landslide.

My favorite Ted talk of all time: “It’s halftime at the Monday Night Game of the Week. Green Bay 7, New York Giants 7. But I understand the game is much closer than the score indicates.”