Bill Moyers: Why I am Returning to the Air

Dear Friends,

You already may have heard that I'd be coming back in January with a new series on the public television station nearest you. But you may not have heard exactly why. It's not just that I lack retirement skills, as my wife and co-editor, Judith, keeps reminding me. Or that the squeaky rocking chair on the front porch got on my nerves. I'm coming back because in tumultuous times like these I relish the company of people who try to make sense of the tumult. These are the people I'll bring to our new broadcast,Moyers & Company.

Journalism has long been for me a continuing course in adult education. Given what's happening in this country, it's time to sign up for more classes. The lack of civility and common sense that has paralyzed our democracy, the vast economic and social inequality that sends both left and right raging into the streets, the corrosive influence of money in politics - we're in a tailspin with little hope for a course correction from our elected leadership or corporate-dominated media. The need for voices of reason, simple and eloquent, has rarely been stronger.

Those voices, whether they be from artist or social critic, philosopher or poet, historian or physicist, can bring us truth, inspiration, even hope. So I'll be reaching out in this new series to people engaged in the trials and errors of democracy, who have tested their ideas against experience, and who know that the health of our body politic is everybody's business. They help us see the world anew, and to make informed choices.

This will be a political series, but not a partisan one. In the conversation of democracy, everyone's invited. That means you, too. You're welcome to share opinions in the marketplace of ideas we'll be offering with our all-new website, billmoyers.com. Our aim is dialogue, not diatribe, and we want you in it.

So join us - on Moyers & Company. (Truth is, I never really cared for that rocking chair.)

Yours Truly,

Bill Moyers