Hinckley v. Reagan: Fuzzy Memories Shows Us What It Looked Like At Home

By Karl Klockars in News on Mar 30, 2011 6:30PM

It was 30 years ago, almost to the moment of this post, that John Hinckley opened fire on President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. There will be plenty of retrospectives and recaps and mentions of Jodie Foster in the press today (which we're sure she's thrilled about) but only FuzzyMemories can bring that coverage back home to Chicago.

Rick Klein (who we interviewed a while back) posted this clip featuring a mix of local and national coverage from the afternoon newscasts from three decades ago. Included in the clip is a mix of Bill Kurtis, Carol Marin on WMAQ with a local connection, Dick Kay and Linda Yu (the more things change, huh?), all covering their own particular angles of the story,

It's an interesting flashback to an environment that still has a lot of similarities to today's news, despite technical changes like the single television in the press room and the printed out wire copy. It's also interesting to watch the Reagan mystique evolve as it happens, inre: the "I forgot to duck" line being instantly reported. If you're interested in the national angle from that date, you're in luck: Rick's got that posted as well in two parts (one, two).