As the first Republican presidential primary debate was drawing near on 6 August, news site Mashable published some pre-debate analysis by a new contributor.

The piece was structured in the form of a drinking game. It laid out things to watch for, such as invocations of Ronald Reagan, predictable GOP buzzwords and blistering zingers from Donald Trump, and instructed readers when to take a swig.

But perhaps its most noteworthy feature was its author, someone for whom the package was a bit of a stylistic departure. The writing came from Dan Rather, the venerable newsman and old-school broadcaster who left the anchor chair at CBS Evening News a decade ago.

The Mashable piece is part of the second act in Rather’s career – one that sees his feet firmly planted on digitally native soil and incorporating his own production company (News and Guts Media), an interview show he hosts on Mark Cuban’s AXS TV and a book in the works.

Rather, now 83 and still calling himself “a workaday reporter”, is a throwback to another era and a product of a different time, back when serious men with voices suitable for graveside orations delivered a news report that much of the nation would tune in to watch.

Gone, of course, is that communal TV experience. And whereas Rather’s news consumption tools today include a tablet and an iPhone 6, there’s still plenty about him and about gathering the news that hasn’t changed.

He bristles, for example, at the expectations that 2016’s will be a $5bn-plus presidential campaign. “Who’s giving what to whom and expecting what in return?” he angrily wonders aloud.

He bemoans “celebrity journalism”, lumping even himself in at times with its practitioners who too often ignore “the Dickensian side of society”.

Whether he’s chatting for his AXS TV show The Big Interview with Josh Groban about what piece of music the singer might like played at his funeral, or writing for a web news site followed by people who were in their teens or younger when he signed off at CBS News for the last time with the word “Courage”, it all feels too much like fun.

“When news is done well, it matters,” he says. “It’s important. When it’s done with a sense of quality and integrity, it gives you, I think, almost an unparalleled sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself, of contributing to something bigger than yourself.

“It’s been true for a long time, and it’s as true now as it ever was, that when my feet hit the floor every morning, I’m still thinking – ‘Where’s the big story, and how can I get to it?’”

That hunt for the big story played a central role in Rather’s departure from CBS. The end of his more than 40 years at the network was precipitated by his report in September 2004 on 60 Minutes about the discovery of memos that seemed to cast the Texas Air National Guard record of the then US president George W Bush in a negative light.

After the broadcast, claims began to circulate that the documents didn’t appear to be authentic. CBS later retracted the story and fired producer Mary Mapes.

Rather retired as the CBS Evening News anchor in 2005 and he says today the episode is well “in my rear-view mirror”.

However, he stands by the “guts” of the story, saying that the underlying facts – including that Bush, through the influence of his father, got into a unit of the Texas Air National Guard that would allow him to avoid service in Vietnam – were true.

“As part of the campaign to smear the story and to smear us, the attack had at its core that we had not sufficiently proven the documents were what they purported to be,” Rather says. “But we’re 11 years later now, and nobody has ever proven that they weren’t anything other than what we reported them to be.

“The essence of reporting, one very important part of it [is that] news organisations and teams within those organisations have to have the guts and the backbone to dig into stories that people in power don’t want the public to know.

“If you take the attitude that the public needs to know what somebody in power doesn’t want them to know, that’s news. Most of the rest of what passes for news is propaganda or advertising.”

His caveat is that doing so means you “also have to face the furnace and take the heat” in pursuit of that kind of journalism.

His time in the furnace will become something of a talking point again soon, thanks to the October premiere of Truth, a movie starring Robert Redford (as Rather) and Cate Blanchett (as Mapes) based on a memoir from Mapes that will offer a behind-the-scenes look at that period of Rather’s career. Now his on-screen time revolves around The Big Interview, a show that is the result of Cuban repurposing his TV channel toward more live music events.

Rather previously did a one-hour programme on Cuban’s channel called Dan Rather Reports specialising in deep dives and investigative work. That series ran for seven years, but in keeping with the channel adjustment, Rather’s show now focuses on interviews with people from the world of entertainment.

“In The Big Interview, we’re less interested in the subject’s current project or current release,” Rather says. “We’re more interested in who you are. Who are you as a person? What makes you angry? What passion do you have outside your work?

“It keeps us in business, helps pay the bills. I’d rather be doing an investigative report, something on the presidential campaign. But Mark Cuban has been good to me over the years, and when he asked me to do this, I gave a quick and enthusiastic yes.”

Meanwhile, Rather is looking for other platforms and outlets through which he can pursue and disseminate the kind of investigative journalism that still excites him. He has “several things working” and says he’s hopeful they may lead to something in the near future.

He’s also juggling things like his new association with Mashable, which he’s now a few weeks into. His experience working with the site so far, he says, feels like “landing on a new planet”.

“They have an audience that’s broad and deep, but their core audience is 18 to 24,” he adds. “They had some suggestions on how to rewrite [the presidential debate piece], so I did and it became the drinking game. Believe you me, this was not a piece of great journalism.

“But it was a great learning experience. The primary reason I was interested in this, now that we’re fairly deep into the digital age, is – how can those of us who care about quality journalism present news, present what I call real, hard news, in a way that will be understood, appreciated and absorbed by new generations of people?”

Perhaps that’s what compelled Rather to also sit recently for a Buzzfeed video, in which an offscreen questioner quizzes him on what he knows about modern slang.

The newsman spent most of the clip – which has passed 420,000 views on YouTube – chuckling and bewildered at phrases like “on fleek” and “bae.” (“On fleek? I have no idea. You may as well be speaking Swahili or High Norse to me.”)

Of course, Rather also brings a purposeful sense of mission to the work, even if he can poke fun at it and at himself.

“The amount of reporting that has to do with the hungry, the homeless, the heartbroken, the helpless, the voiceless – people who think they’re without hope. The amount of reporting done on that … it disappoints me,” he says. “I want to get angry about that, and I include myself in the criticism I’ve just given. Mentally, I lecture myself, saying, Dan, you like covering politics so much – and politics matters – but where is the reporting on these people? On these situations?”

And so, the inveterate reporter presses on, in a world and profession he doesn’t recognise so much any more but one that he can’t envisage ever letting go of.

Naturally, the purveyor of news also has a ravenous appetite for it, and his personal habits include using Facebook and Twitter to share news and commentary. Rather tries to read six newspapers a day, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times. And he turns throughout the day to online news sites, including those of CNN and the Washington Post.

He’s just started writing a new book, one he doesn’t yet want to say much about but which has American presidential politics as its subject.

“If I went into what is generally called retirement,” Rather says, in consideration of his current pace, “I’d feel as useless as a pulled tooth.”

Curriculum vitae



Age 83

Education John H Reagan High School, Houston. Sam Houston State University (journalism)

Career 1950 reporter, Associated Press, United Press 1954 reporter, Houston Chronicle 1959 reporter, KTRK-TV 1962 reporter, CBS, New York 1963 southern bureau chief 1965 foreign correspondent, London 1966 foreign correspondent, Vietnam, White House correspondent 1970 primary anchor, CBS Sunday Night News 1974 chief correspondent, CBS Reports 1981 anchor, CBS Evening News 2006 leaves CBS, joins AXS TV