Robert Novak - Later Career and Recognition

Later Career and Recognition

In 1963, Novak teamed up with Rowland Evans, a former Congressional correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, to create the Inside Report, a newspaper column published four times a week. It was also known as Inside Washington. Evans did not know Novak at all except through his reputation when they started. They each had a contrasting public image, with Novak dressing sloppy and Evans' appearing like a diplomat with a refined manner. Their column mixed standard reporting with their own editorial opinions. It began with muted, mostly centrist views, but their words drifted rightward over time. Novak's experience covering the Six-Day War in the field influenced his beliefs towards Evans' pro-Palestinian sympathies.

The column's factual accuracy has been called into question. Novak stated in his autobiography, “We were so ravenous for exclusive news that we were susceptible to manipulation by leaks, compromising our credibility”. Chicago Sun-Times became the "home" paper for Inside Report from 1966 onward. Novak continued the column after Evans' departure on May 15, 1993. Evans' died in 2001, and Inside Report ran in over 150 papers at that time through Creators Syndicate. Publication ended after Novak's cancer diagnosis in July 2008. Bloomberg L.P. has stated that the column was a must-read among political insiders, as did The Washingtonian. It was the longest running syndicated political column in U.S. history.

In 1967, Evans and Novak set up a bi-weekly political newsletter called the Evans-Novak Political Report (ENPR). They took a more broad approach in this series compared to their column, focusing on forecast elections and predicting socio-political trends rather than on breaking stories. Regnery Publishing eventually bought ENPR from Novak, but it left editorial control and hiring decisions in Novak's hands. In 2006, Timothy P. Carney of Regnery became Novak's partner in the newsletter. On February 4, 2009, Novak announced he was ending ENPR's publication. This last issue described the implications of Barack Obama's election as President, which the authors labeled a political 'paradigm shift'. Conservative writers such as John Fund, who later worked for The Wall Street Journal, and David Freddoso, who later worked for National Review Online, started off as contributors to the ENPR.

Novak appeared on CNN on its opening week in 1980. His status as a well-known print reporter brought a sense of credibility to the fledgling new network, and Novak soon created a weekly interview show that Evans co-hosted. Novak became a regular panel member of The McLaughlin Group in 1982, starring alongside McLaughlin as well as Novak's personal friends Al Hunt and Mark Shields. Novak sparred frequently with McLaughlin despite the fact that they both held similar political views. He established a public image as a combative debater on the program. Novak then became the executive producer of The Capital Gang, which also featured him as a key member of the show. He also took over as host of Crossfire from Pat Buchanan.

On August 4, 2005, Novak walked off the set during a live broadcast of the show Inside Politics, on which he appeared along with Democratic strategist and analyst James Carville. During a heated discussion about Florida Republican Representative Katherine Harris' just-announced 2006 bid for U.S. Senate, Novak uttered an expletive after Carville remarked that Novak had “to show these right-wingers that he’s got a backbone.” As anchor Ed Henry was asking Carville a question, Novak threw off his microphone and stormed off the set. Critics later charged that Novak had done so to avoid discussing recent developments in the Valerie Plame affair on-air. In response to the incident, CNN suspended Novak for one day and apologized to its viewers, calling the outburst "inexcusable and unacceptable."

Novak retired from CNN after 25 years on December 23, 2005, stating that his relationship with the network lasted "longer than most marriages". Novak also said he had "no complaints" about CNN. Fox News had confirmed one week earlier that Novak had signed a contract to do unspecified work for the network. Novak stated that he still would have left CNN even if he had not been suspended in the August incident and did not go to Fox News because the network was more friendly to his point of view. Novak said:

His memoirs, entitled Prince of Darkness: Fifty Years Reporting in Washington, were published in July 2007 by Crown Forum, a division of Random House. "Prince of Darkness" was a nickname given to Novak by his friend, reporter John Lindsay, because Lindsay "thought for a young man I took a very dim view of the prospects for our civilization," Novak said in an interview. Novak loved the nickname. He once dressed up as Darth Vader to a dinner with the Gridiron Club, and he then sang a song about Dick Cheney as the character.

At his height, Novak was one of the five most read columnists in the U.S. Throughout his career, Novak wrote for numerous other publications, serving notably as a contributing editor for Reader's Digest. He appeared on NBC's program Meet the Press over 200 times. He served as a longtime CNN television personality, and he appeared intermittently on Fox News after his August 2005 departure from CNN. After his death, L. Brent Bozell called him a 'gladiator' of American conservatism. Novak also played a role among many other reporters in Timothy Crouse's seminal non-fiction book The Boys on the Bus that described reporters covering the lead-up to the 1972 Presidential election. In August 2004, The Washington Post stated that Novak might "wince unto this day" at his portrayal in the book.

Novak received an Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997. Novak frequently visited his alma mater and interacted with students, establishing a scholarship in his name to support English and Rhetoric majors in 1992.He spoke at the college's May 1998 commencement, urging graduates to use their education as a "bulwark against tyranny". Novak also served as a Radford Visiting Professor of Journalism for Baylor University in 1987. He was the 2001 winner of the National Press Club's 'Fourth Estate Award' for lifetime achievement in journalism as well. Novak appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary on political strategist Lee Atwater, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. In the film, Novak says "He tried to get me to write about Governor Dukakis having psychiatric problems but it really was a slander. He thought my weakness was that if I could get an exclusive story, I would jump at it, bite at it and not be as careful as I should be. That may be true, but I was careful enough not to get involved in that one.”