Long Island's Maurice DuBois ready for his 'incredible moment' as 'CBS Evening News' co-anchor

It's 20 minutes to 4 on a recent Thursday at Ch. 2 headquarters on West 57th Street, when Maurice DuBois strides into a conference room. The former baseball standout at Port Jefferson's Earl L. Vandermeulen High School, class of '83, is a lifelong Yankees fan but the impending fate of the Bombers is not broached. That would put an unnecessary damper on the conversation and DuBois, in this moment, is not about "dampers," glass-half-empties, a divisive election or divided city that he's had to report on night after night — three times a night, at 5, 6 and 11.

For the present anyway, he's all about the future.

"I'm excited, I'm over the moon," he says. "I see challenges ahead [but] I'll just embrace the whole thing. It's an incredible moment and I'm ready to go."

In person as on the air, DuBois, 59, is congenial, composed and especially familiar — the consequence of 27 years on the air in New York, seven at WNBC/4 and 20 at Ch. 2. This interview, in fact, was scheduled back in the spring to talk about those 20 years, a considerable-enough milestone in a business where tenures are usually measured in contract cycles, much less decades. With the departure of Dana Tyler in March (after 34 years), he is now the rock of this particular Gibraltar — the second longest-running anchor at Ch. 2 after Cindy Hsu.

NEXT STEP: 'CBS EVENING NEWS' CO-ANCHOR

But events, as they sometimes do, have overtaken this anniversary. Over the summer, CBS announced DuBois will become co-anchor oft "The CBS Evening News" with John Dickerson, currently chief political analyst. An exact launch date is yet to be set but sometime in January is expected.

Depending on which perspective this is viewed from, these two appointments are freighted with symbolism. Dickerson is the son of pioneering correspondent Nancy Dickerson, who became CBS News' first female correspondent in 1960. (Nancy Dickerson, who later joined NBC News, died in 1997.)

And over its 76-year history, there have been just eight anchors of the weeknight edition of "The CBS Evening News," none of them Black. DuBois, who becomes the first, diplomatically observes that "I'm the beneficiary of a lot of people's efforts and labors, but a lot of people should have had a shot before." Ed Bradley, arguably the network's most gifted anchor after Walter Cronkite, headed the Sunday edition of "Evening News" from 1976 to 1981.

DuBois says he "met Ed Bradley a few times and chatted with him a little bit. I wanted to be Ed Bradley. I wanted to be Ted Koppel. I wanted to be Bryant Gumbel. I wanted to be those people. Those were among my idols."

This new team — CBS calls them an "ensemble" — has already been at work. DuBois and Dickerson covered both Trump assassination attempts, and other breaking news. DuBois has been a frequent stand-in on "Evening News" the past few months, too: He may be familiar to New Yorkers, but hardly to the rest of the country.

CBS NEWS AT THE CROSSROADS

Meanwhile, all of this comes at a particularly complicated moment for a proud TV station and news franchise. News division president Ingrid Ciprián-Matthews left over the summer, then Norah O'Donnell, anchor since 2019, said in late July she was stepping down, too. (She'll remain a special correspondent.) 

No reasons were given, adding to speculation that all this was related to cost-containment — under intense scrutiny at CBS, which is about to get a new owner (Skydance) for whom TV journalism is a new and perhaps unwelcome frontier.

The DuBois-Dickerson team was unveiled a couple days after O'Donnell's announcement and that, too, raised questions. Dual anchors may be ubiquitous on local news, but haven't really succeeded on the national level since David Brinkley ended his long run with Chet Huntley in 1970.

DuBois will also soon become the first local TV anchor to get the job at "Evening News," which means Ch. 2 will have to replace him on the various broadcasts he co-anchors with Kristine Johnson.

Ch. 2 had initially hoped to keep him as anchor for the 11 p.m., but DuBois now says doing both would be "physically impossible." 

CAN HE STAY AT CH. 2?

Instead, "we're trying to figure out a way to keep Maurice present for our audience on a regular basis," says Sarah Burke, vice president of news for Ch.2. "But what that looks like — a segment in the broadcasts? — are still conversations we're having about what makes sense."

"This is a living, breathing organization and change is part of it," she says, but the decision to elevate Dubois makes sense because "he's a great choice."

Burke's not alone in that assessment. DuBois' longtime colleague and friend at Ch. 2, Peter McGowan, the station's head of operations and technology, calls him a "complete broadcaster," and Dan Forman, his former boss at both WCBS/2 and WNBC/4 says he "is calm, smooth, solid, and he is professional on the air, and that makes viewers comfortable."

Paula Madison, a former NBC News executive and longtime news director at WNBC/4, has a slightly different perspective on his appointment: "I'm thrilled for Maurice because he is an extremely committed and dedicated journalist, which is how I knew him when I hired him — but I also hope he gets the managing editor title" — traditionally a critical part of this job, but so far going to neither him nor Dickerson.

Meanwhile, CBS' immediate task is to introduce him to the rest of the world. It's a profile that just now is coming into focus.

GROWING UP ON LONG ISLAND

The son of immigrants from the Caribbean island nation of Dominica, his father — also Maurice, now 92 — arrived in the United States with "just his clothes," says DuBois. He later joined the Air Force and got through Suffolk Community College on the G.I. Bill then joined Brookhaven National Laboratory where he worked in payroll; his mother, Ramona, who died in 2021, had a long career at the IRS.

Born at the former Brookhaven Memorial Hospital (now Long Island Community Hospital) in Patchogue, DuBois was raised in Gordon Heights, then in 1975, the family (DuBois has a younger brother, Richard) moved to Mount Sinai. DuBois recalls how his father got his bachelor's degree at Hofstra then master's degree at C.W. Post, while working nights and weekends. "One weekend, when I was 10, we all piled into the car and drove to some special occasion. I watched him stand up and — I still get choked up when I start to say it — walk across the stage to get his MBA."

At his father's suggestion, he took the sole journalism class Vandermeulen offered; Carl Siegel, a longtime English teacher there, now retired, who taught the class, recalls, "He loved to write [and] about the only advice I ever gave was just to shorten it and keep the details. That was the only suggestion. He worked really hard [and] he was attached to his work."

Siegel also recalled that "he wanted to play a lot of baseball, but recognized he was better at writing."

DuBois jokes "I was a mediocre player" (first base, outfield), and instead focused on what he really wanted to do. He reported for the high school paper, the Brookhaven newsletter, and the local East Setauket paper, the Village Times. At Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, he took "the one broadcast class they offered at the time," which lead to an internship at a legendary Chicago station, CBS-owned, WBBM — and a career.

JOINING THE NEW YORK TV WARS

After college, DuBois jumped from station to station, from Seattle to Sacramento, where he anchored an overnight newscast, then back to Chicago. He joined Ch. 4 in New York in 1997 and along with Jane Hanson, was named co-anchor of the new "Today in New York" — an early morning show with an inauspicious start.

At Ch. 4, DuBois developed a reputation as a solid anchor and reporter, also someone who chafed at his limited role. He wanted something bigger, and not just at the station but the network. He left for Ch. 2 in September 2004, when its general manager — also formerly DuBois' boss at Ch. 4 — brought him over.

At 2, he joined a troubled station, albeit one with an upside. WCBS had long been a New York also-ran, far behind WABC/7, and had cycled through anchors, or dispatched them en masse (at least in one vivid firing in 1996). Sports reporter Warner Wolf had been fired a few months before DuBois arrived, then Ernie Anastos left the following year. But stations in turmoil can be good places to build careers, which is what DuBois set out to do.

He has anchored virtually every broadcast at the station at one time or another and found himself in front of a camera for every major local story (13 hours straight for Superstorm Sandy) and few international ones, too. (At Ch. 4, he had reported on the French reaction to 9/11, because he had been returning from his honeymoon in Paris when the first plane hit, forcing his flight to turn back.) DuBois has been a constant presence at parades and telethons, moderated debates and hosted specials, from mental health to "Son of Sam."

He also picked up numerous network assignments, for "CBS Sunday Morning," "CBS Mornings," "48 Hours" and the new streaming service.

'WE HAVE A JOB TO DO'

But with all of this — and all of that, over 27 years at two major stations, in the nation's largest city — DuBois says he never quite expected the call he would get from Wendy McMahon, CBS chief of stations and news. "When she presented this plan — this vision — and said we want you to be a part of this, I had to let that sink in for a minute."

The sinking-in process continues, he admits. For example, the new DuBois-Dickerson "Evening News" is expected to dispense with the so-called "voice of God" anchor approach typical of the past 70-or-so years. What that means for their roles on an anchor desk remodeled for two — a little more time for both on the road? — is unclear. Stories are also expected to be more in-depth, less tied to the news of the day. A daily "60 Minutes" is the model most often referred to, although DuBois says the program will in many respects remain what it's always been — a headline service that tells viewers what happened that day, and around the world.

But there is a bottom line here — something essential, important and symbolic, at one of the most storied programs on all of television — and you are left with a sense that DuBois, on the eve of the biggest break of his career, knows this better than anyone.

"I will bring everything I have — all the experiences I have personally to the position, to the job, to the newscast, to the meetings, to every aspect of it. We have a job to do."