John Chancellor

John William Chancellor (July 14, 1927 – July 12, 1996) was an American journalist who spent most of his career with NBC News. He is considered a pioneer in television news. Chancellor served as anchor of the NBC Nightly News from 1970 to 1982 and continued to do editorials and commentaries for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw until 1993.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Chancellor dropped out of high school, worked odd jobs and enlisted in the Army, serving in a public relations unit during World War II. After leaving the service, he attended the University of Illinois Navy Pier campus, completing the last two years of instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1949. Originally a copy boy at 14 for the Chicago Daily News and hired in 1947 to be a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, he started his career in local television in Chicago, eventually turning to national television news as a correspondent on NBC's evening newscast, the Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Chancellor covered issues of national importance while on The Huntley-Brinkley Report.

He covered the 1957 integration of Little Rock Central High School, where a young Black girl, Elizabeth Eckford, wanted to attend an integrated school. Chancellor's coverage showed the world the white mob that surrounded her. After Chancellor began to cover the Little Rock story, segregationists followed him around town, growing increasingly angry. Chancellor did not run. Instead, he kept reporting, despite the angry crowds around him.

Chancellor spent a number of years as a foreign correspondent in Europe, with postings in Vienna, London, Moscow, and Brussels (NATO Headquarters).

In July 1961, Chancellor replaced Dave Garroway as host of NBC's Today program, a role he filled for fourteen months. Never comfortable with the soft news focus of Today, Chancellor asked for, and was granted, a release from his contract with the show in the summer of 1962. He left the program in September, and assumed a role as political correspondent for NBC News. He, Frank McGee, Edwin Newman, and Sander Vanocur comprised a team that covered the national political conventions in the 1960s so well, they were dubbed by industry observers as the "Four Horsemen".

At the 1964 Republican National Convention, Chancellor was arrested for refusing to cede his spot on the floor to "Goldwater Girls," supporters of the Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. When security came to get him, he was forced to sign off: "I've been promised bail, ladies and gentlemen, by my office. This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody." He then became the director of the Voice of America in 1965, at the request of President Lyndon Johnson, a spot he held until 1967.

Chancellor returned to NBC in 1968 as senior correspondent on the Huntley-Brinkley Report and, two years later when Chet Huntley retired, Chancellor stepped in to anchor the broadcast, renamed NBC Nightly News, a spot he held from 1970 to 1982; this job became the defining point of his career. Inaugurating the name and setting the pace of the format of Nightly News, from 1970 to 1971, Chancellor, along with David Brinkley and Frank McGee, was one of three anchors who rotated in a co-anchor duo format, held over from Huntley-Brinkley. NBC arranged the rotation by having McGee always broadcast from New York City and Brinkley continue at his customary Washington desk. If McGee did not anchor on a broadcast, Chancellor did from New York; if Brinkley did not, Chancellor filled in from Washington. NBC did not have separate weekend anchors during this period, as it had just inaugurated a Sunday evening newscast in August 1970, so this format was employed seven days a week.