The Pottses: still making headlines
The Broadside, Bob and Marjory Potts's weekly news leaflet, recently began its 10th year of continuous publication. The Pottses are news gatherers who've honed their skills over 50 years of print, radio, and television reporting in Europe and the U.S.
The Pottses in their West Tisbury home, where they produce the weekly Broadside. Photo by Ralph Stewart
They've made films about President Richard Nixon's China trip and the ugliness of the 1971 Attica prison riot, covered down and dirty New York City politics and brushed against the country's most untidy messes, including Watergate and the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s.
The Broadside reflects the wide experience of its two publishers, who enjoy polar opposite personalities. If every relationship has its own dance, the Potts's dance is exotic, but redolent of well woven love. They will celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary next week.
Ms. Potts is a rapid fire speaker with a firmly developed belief system. She believes in the justness of her and her husband's lifework. Mr. Potts is a taciturn, pithy man with experience on a wire service foreign desk in London, as a New York TV street reporter, and an original news anchor on public television. Mr. Potts delivers headlines. Ms. Potts provides the details.
Bob and Marjory Potts in Ms. Potts's Lower East Side apartment in 1964, six weeks before they were married. Photo courtesy of The Pottses
While her own career is a study of success through personal reinvention, she is committed to making sure Mr. Potts's light is not hidden. She often finishes her husband's sentences, expanding what's unspoken. She answers questions asked of him - a practice they both seem to enjoy. Only occasionally does Mr. Potts remonstrate: "He asks the questions, I can answer them," he says, eliciting a heartfelt resolution from his wife not to intercede again.
Her resolve lasts only until the next question. He listens intently to her account of the details of his life, occasionally interjecting clarifications and corrections.
Ms. Potts is a delightful raconteur with an electric personality. Once the interviewer adjusts, their dual interview process becomes remarkably efficient.
Mr. Potts's verbal efficiency can make public officials uncomfortable.
"Yeah, they're always a little nervous," Ms. Potts says. "He's, well...not humble exactly...but reticent. That's it. He's reticent." Her husband thinks about her assessment and does not comment.
The Pottses have lived in West Tisbury since 1981, raised two children, Phoebe and Oliver, formed a film company, and with The Broadside, scratched a perpetual itch for news reporting.
The Broadside covers town governance and affairs, a reminiscent throwback to the days when print was king and the death of an aging rock star did not push war reporting off the front page. It is modest - a two-sided letter size sheet that costs 10 cents on the honor system.
The Potts's personalities differ, but they share a passion for social justice. They met when both applied for jobs in 1962 as newsreaders on WBAI, a left wing New York radio station. She was attacking the then concrete ceiling on women in newsrooms, and he was moving from U.S. Army Intelligence and another job translating Russian newspapers into English for library and government agency consumption.
"He was a spy. He tells the grandkids that," Ms. Potts says.
"I was not a spy," Mr. Potts says. "I was in the supply room. That's better than being a spy. In the supply room, you controlled everything." One of his projects became hiding the works of Marx and Lenin from communist-hunter Roy Cohn, counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisc.).
Born in Manhattan, Mr. Potts went to Columbia University, studying Russian language and culture. Ms. Potts, a Connecticut native, graduated from Ohio State University before moving to New York to pursue journalism.
Mr. Potts become a street reporter for network stations, then was hired to create and anchor New York's first public television news show.
Ms. Potts wrote and worked for liberal causes and became a sought after political specialist, working in campaigns with Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman and others.
"Elizabeth was very good, but she was cold," Ms. Potts says. "She made her reputation on the Watergate committee and wanted to run for U.S. Senate. They asked me to warm her up and to schmooze the crowds. That's me, the ultimate schmoozer."
"I remember her working the crowds, exchanging recipes," Mr. Potts says.
Mr. Potts's television talent led him to the Rockefeller commission investigating a bloody riot at New York's Attica state prison in 1971. He made a film about prison reform based on Attica - "How not to run a criminal justice system," he recalls.
When they moved here, Mr. Potts was hired by WMVY, then under different ownership, as the part-time news director. He took his job seriously and began to break stories. Ms. Potts wrote for the Cape Cod Times and the Potts news crew was at it again.
As they describe it, sometimes success found them. In 1982, they made a short documentary film about a well known New York classical music ensemble.
"What a recipe for success - a film about a string quartet," Ms. Potts jokes. But the film sold to music schools, and their dreams about making films like the Nixon China trip and Attica morphed into producing more than a dozen educational films on subjects ranging from dyslexia to teaching Shakespeare.
Now they focus on The Broadside. "I did it for fun and decided to add some purpose to the fun," Mr. Potts says of The Broadside. Meanwhile, Ms. Potts applies her ninja-like intensity to her garden.
Jack Shea is a regular contributor to The Times.
