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An interview with Brian Lamb does not go far before the veteran journalist turns the tables and begins interviewing the interviewer.
“What did you study at George Mason?” he asked, mere seconds into the conversation. “Where were you before that? Why did you come back to the school?”
He seems genuinely interested. It takes a moment to catch what he’s done, but eventually there’s a course correction and the conversation proceeds as intended, with Lamb answering the queries and not the other way around.
The inquisitiveness should not come as a surprise. After all, Lamb, the founder and former executive chairman and CEO of Cable and Satellite Public Affairs Network—known the world over as C-SPAN—has interviewed countless authors, politicians, entertainers, and others from various walks of life since he was in high school in Lafayette, Indiana, where he got his start at an AM radio station at age 17. It’s in his nature to ask questions.
The 84-year-old newsman and pioneering broadcaster is coming to Mason Square on February 10 for a moderated conversation hosted by George Mason University Libraries called “How C-SPAN Changed Our World.” The event begins at 6 p.m. at Van Metre Hall rooms 125/126. Schar School of Policy and Government dean Mark J. Rozell will conduct the conversation. The talk is free and open to the public.
This is not Lamb’s first visit to George Mason. In fact, far from it. The Arlington, Virginia, resident is a genuine fan of the school, marveling at its continuing evolution as Virginia’s largest public research university.
As evidence, he was at the Verizon Center (now the Capitol One Arena) on March 26, 2006, when the Patriots took on the top-seeded University of Connecticut Huskies in the NCAA’s March Madness Elite Eight semifinal game. The overtime win sent George Mason to its first Final Four appearance.
“I was more excited about that game than I’ve been about my own alma mater, Purdue,” Lamb said. “I just wanted Mason to win the whole thing.”
He has been friends of top administrators, including former presidents who expanded the school’s reputation, enrollment, and campus infrastructure, George W. Johnson (1979-1996) and, especially, Alan Merten (1996-2012). Both are deceased.
C-SPAN has done some expansion of its own: The network, which began with one channel in March 1979, now has a robust schedule of three cable and internet streams; a 24-hour over-the-air and satellite radio station; 15 podcasts; and handy apps to put all the programming at an inquisitive citizen’s fingertips.
Ten years after launching, Lamb started “Booknotes,” a weekly program where he congenially grilled guests about their nonfiction books on history, politics, and public affairs. He conducted more than 800 interviews until the final episode in December 2004. Those books, many of them signed and annotated, are now in the George Mason University’s Special Collections Research Center and available as a resource for faculty and students.
“It was [Dean of Libraries] John Zenelis, the librarian at George Mason, who wrote me the letter after I stopped ‘Booknotes’ and said, ‘I want your books.’ That’s how it all started,” he said. “I’ve always been fond of George Mason; I think it’s terrific to watch a school grow.”
As for meeting best-selling authors, including world leaders and every president since Richard Nixon, Lamb confided that “the big names always create some tension because there are too many people around them,” he said. “My first choice is either a journalist or a historian who knows something, because I want to learn something.”
And the man who started C-SPAN admits, remarkably, “I’m not a fan of interviewing politicians. You don’t know if they’re going to believe the same thing in two years.”
Although he’s retired from broadcast, he stays current with a weekly podcast in which he interviews people who interest him, most likely not politicians.
The title of the February 10 Mason Square talk is a bit hyperbolic for his taste—“I don’t think we changed the world,” he said—although he can see how his network, with its first-of-its-kind access to the chambers of Congress, did indeed change the way citizens viewed how government works. Before C-SPAN’s cameras were broadcasting from the Capitol, the world could only imagine how policy is created and laws are passed.
“We got to see things,” Lamb said. “If you were interested, you saw things you never saw before, and that changed things.”
And it continues to do so.