Tom Brokaw

The daunting task of being a mother, a wife, and an independent career or professional person is really taxing.

I'm the father of three daughters, and they're all highly trained professionals. Two of them are mothers, and the other one wants to be at some point.

Sometime in the early Seventies, gender-free toys were briefly a popular idea. So at Christmas on the California beach in 1972, we downplayed the dolls with frilly dresses and loaded up Santa's sack with toy trucks and earth movers for our three daughters.

Our daughters were coming of age during a rising consciousness about gender equality. Throughout their school years - from kindergarten through graduate school, 1972 to 1992 - women were starting to take their places in areas traditionally reserved mostly for men.

My hope is that we would begin to have a dialogue in this country about the importance of civility. We can have strong differences, but it does seem to me that most of the country believes it's gone to critical mass in what I would call the professional class across the political spectrum - left and right.

I'm not a big fan of journalism schools, except those that are organized around a liberal arts education. Have an understanding of history, economics and political science - and then learn to write.

I have no problem whatsoever with a kind of political overview or an ideological overview for any of these outlets as long as it's transparent. We know where Breitbart stands, we know where Fox stands, where MSNBC stands. So, people go in with an understanding of that.

I started writing a journal, and I was learning so much along the way. How to deal with your family, how to deal with your friends.

The disquieting news of Danny Villanueva's death brought back memories of our time together at KNBC in the early 1970s.

In one way or another, President Obama's critics will dog him all the way to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and even his admirers will continue to have doubts about his accomplishments if not his promise.

What I think is that Fox has done a very smart job of carving out their place.

In 1962, I had an entry-level reporter's job at an Omaha television station. I had bargained to get a salary of $100 dollars a week because I didn't feel I could tell Meredith's doctor father I was making less.