<blockquote>"Nothing has been as intriguing as the possibility of working with you," Rose wrote to Jeff Fager, the executive producer, in a letter that is unusu

<blockquote>"Nothing has been as intriguing as the possibility of working with you," Rose wrote to Jeff Fager, the executive producer, in a letter that is unusual for its self-awareness and tactical brilliance. (Rose has saved the letter and gave me a copy.) "You can't imagine for a romantic like me what it means to come out of North Carolina, the birthplace of Murrow, and walk in the footsteps of Murrow and Collingwood, Cronkite and Sevareid, Wallace and Safer, and to play on the same team as Rather and Fager." But Rose resists, quoting Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness. His PBS show is like "the battered, twisted ruined tin pot steamboat ... rather less pretty in shape, but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her." The show, like the old vessel, gave Rose "the chance to find 'your own reality -- for yourself, not for others -- what no man can ever know.'" "In the end," he told Fager, "I have not finished the journey." </blockquote>