“If a story is dramatic, you don’t have to tell it dramatically.”

From the Washington Post obit, by Matt Schudel, on NBC television’s Jack Perkins:

Jack Perkins, a longtime NBC newscaster who later served as the urbane, deep-voiced host of “Biography” on the A&E cable network, died Aug. 19 at his home on Casey Key, Fla. He was 85. . . .

“Putting the mug on camera gets you recognized by strangers, and that’s not unpleasant,” Mr. Perkins said in 1986, “but the abiding gratification derives from the writing.”. . .

He went to NBC in 1961, becoming a writer for and protege of David Brinkley, the Washington-based anchor of the network’s evening news show, “The Huntley-Brinkley Report.”

“What Brinkley taught me was a master class in how TV news should be written,” Mr. Perkins told the Longboat (Fla.) Observer in 2012. “Say less, mean more. If a story is dramatic, you don’t have to tell it dramatically. Be simple. Direct. None of this, ‘The nation suffered a great tragedy’ nonsense.”