(NEWS CENTER Maine) -- Had the word “genial” not already existed, it would have been necessary to invent it to describe Jack Perkins, the longtime NBC News correspondent who bought a home in Maine in the 1980s. He was warm, self-effacing, quick to shift the spotlight away from himself in order to make sure others got credit. These qualities are not always found in TV news.
Perkins died in Florida on August 19 at the age of 85, and his passing brought back the memory not just of seeing him regularly on NBC when I started at NEWS CENTER in the early ‘80s, but also of the time I interviewed him for 207 in 2013. At the time he had just published a book called “Finding Moosewood, Finding God” about his religious faith and the time he and his wife had spent living on an island off Bar Harbor.
In the book he also wrote about what he had learned about broadcast news from NBC anchor David Brinkley. “What Brinkley taught me was a master class in how TV should be written,” The Washington Post said in its obituary, citing an interview Perkins had given to a newspaper in Florida. “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.”
Perkins loved Maine, especially Mount Desert Island, and narrated several documentaries about that area and other parts of the state. They aired on PBS repeatedly and were seen by millions of viewers, and to them his affection for Maine was clear because he followed his own advice and spoke simply and directly, saying less and meaning more.