Albany Student Press: What advice do you have for today’s college students hoping to be successful?

Barbara Walters: Well the first thing, and it’s cliché but it’s true, is follow your bliss. What do you want to do? What do you really love? That’s the hardest decision, especially when everybody else seems to know exactly what they want to do, and you’re the only one that doesn’t. I didn’t. My career didn’t start until I was in my 30’s. The second thing is get your foot in the door. Don’t be too proud. If you want to get into television or radio or newspapers, take any kind of a job. Get there before everybody, stay there later than everybody, and do what you love.

ASP: What attracted you to journalism?

BW: I’m not sure I was attracted, per say, to journalism. I went to work for the local station – this has been a long time, I have to go back a few years. I loved television. I started in the publicity department. My father was very well known in show business and so I knew a lot of the people and I started in the publicity department at was what was then NBC’s local station. Then I was made a producer, and then I was made a network producer. I had no thought of being on the air, it wasn’t going to happen with me. And part of it was that I was in the right place at the right time on the Today show and they knew me because I had been writing for everyone else. So in a way, it was accidental. I never set out and said, “I’m going to be a journalist.” I had a knack for writing and that was helpful. I wrote the way I talked and in television, that’s very helpful. Unless you don’t like the way I talk, and then it’s no help at all.

ASP: What were your college years like?

BW: I went to a school so different from your university. It was very small, I went to Sarah Lawrence College which was in Bronxville, NY. When I was there it was an all girls school. I loved that it was an all girls school. I didn’t have to worry about putting make-up on or being the most popular girl in the class or in the school. And it was very small, so when I see the University at Albany here, I think, “How do you manage?” and “Don’t you get lost in the beginning?” I’m assured that in its own way, it gets to be very cozy and very familiar. For me, it was an extremely different experience — very personal, we all knew each other. If there was a bad side, it was that there were no required courses and I think that’s a mistake. I missed a very great deal.

ASP: Were you studious?

BW: I was very serious. I worked very hard. But again because you could choose the subjects you studied – we didn’t even have majors! – I liked what I was learning, but I missed a lot. I sometimes joke and say if I really learned — I didn’t take a language, I didn’t take math, I didn’t take science – if I had taken all these courses, I might have made something of my life. But what it did instill in me was a curiosity, and it enabled me to work on my own, and to not be afraid to ask questions.

ASP: Why do you think young people don’t follow the news?

BW: I think you do follow the news, you just don’t follow the news the way I follow news. I mean, you have the Internet, and some of you may have iPods. I don’t know why you don’t. There’s so much going on in this country now and you need to be involved with what’s going on. You need to understand why there’s anger in this country and why there’s frustration. If you’re going to be going out there and trying to get a job, you better know what’s going on. But the way I follow the news, newspapers and magazines is not the way that you’re learning news.

ASP: What do you think of Twitter?

BW: I did it for a bit and then I thought it was kind of silly. I think it’s a good thing to use for me if I have special coming up and I want people to know about it. It would have been nice to say “speaking at the University at Albany,” that would have been nice. But when I see people saying “I went to the movies” or “I had my hair done” – who cares? I think it’s a waste of time. Isn’t there something better to do than twitter? Do you think there’s something to better to do than Twitter?

ASP: I know a lot of news stations and journalists use Twitter to link to their articles, and it’s becoming a way to share news.

BW: Well so is Facebook and so is.. well, if it’s a way to share news, I think that’s very good. Most of the people I know who Twitter are not sharing news.

ASP: Have you tried using Facebook?

BW: I haven’t. I interviewed at one point some of the people who made Myspace, and and it’s not for me. I have ways of communicating, although, I can understand that it’s a way of dealing with people and making friends. Andrew Sorkin was on The View, a television program I’m involved with, and he has just written The Social Network. He said, which I thought was very interesting, that he thought Facebook didn’t bring people together as much as it separated them. He thought that because you could do everything now through Facebook, you didn’t have to meet people face-to-face; you didn’t have to talk the way you and I are talking. People are becoming uninvolved rather than involved. When at a time, especially for young people like yourself, there is so much technically that’s happening and there’s so many ways that you can communicate. You can get lost in it. You can spend hours in it and avoid perhaps doing some of the things you might have done if you didn’t use Twitter, and Facebook, and Myspace, and YouTube, and Perez Hilton and Politico and Huffington Post and Daily Beast, and whatever I left out. So you can spend all your time doing that, which is interesting, but maybe there are some other things to spend time on.