Newscasters

BALTIMORE -- Yolanda Vazquez watched a news broadcast on a high-definition television for the first time with mixed emotions. She was impressed by the way it rendered the anchors in such vivid detail. "It's amazing," she said, "like you're not in 3-D but in 15-D." But awe gave way to self-conscious jitters once Vazquez, a reporter and anchor at Maryland Public Television, realized that her turn in front of an HD camera was coming.

The Arab news network Al Jazeera announced Thursday that Dave Marash, an award-winning former correspondent for ABC News' "Nightline," is joining its 24-hour English-language network, to be launched this spring. In an interview Thursday, Marash, 63, described his new position as "the most interesting job on Earth."

The roadside explosion in Iraq that left ABC News co-anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt seriously wounded Sunday also inflicted a demoralizing blow to the entire news division, which is still coping with the grief of abruptly losing Peter Jennings to lung cancer in August. The network received word of Sunday's attack around 5 a.m. Soon afterward, somber employees -- including Woodruff's co-anchor, Elizabeth Vargas -- began assembling in the network's West 66th Street headquarters.

Just weeks into his stint as a globe-trotting co-anchor of ABC News, Bob Woodruff was seriously injured Sunday along with his cameraman when the Iraqi army vehicle in which they were traveling hit a roadside bomb. Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were traveling with an Iraqi unit attached to the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division near Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, when they were wounded.

ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt showed improvement Monday, a day after a roadside explosion rocked their vehicle as they traveled on an Iraq road north of Baghdad, spraying shrapnel that left them both with severe head injuries. The two journalists, who were airlifted to a U.S. military medical center in Landstuhl, Germany, on Sunday night, remained in serious but stable condition.

The last time ABC's Elizabeth Vargas saw her co-anchor, Bob Woodruff, he and his producers had their suitcases with them and were readying to leave the newsroom, bound on a week-and-a-half-long swing through Israel and Iraq. "I was envious -- I wanted to go," Vargas recalled in an interview. "I was sort of joking with him, 'I can't believe you guys are going without me!'

ABC's "World News Tonight" saw a boost in its ratings in the days after anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were seriously injured in a roadside bombing in Iraq. The newscast drew an average viewership of more than 9.3 million people between Jan. 30 and Feb. 3, just 300,000 fewer than top-ranked "NBC Nightly News" and a boost of 7% over its season average. Until last week, the gap between the shows this season was averaging more than 1 million. NBC drew more than 9.

After getting an assist on the evening news from ABC colleagues Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson, Elizabeth Vargas is back to anchoring "World News Tonight" alone. For most of last month, Sawyer and Gibson had alternated shifts on the broadcast, filling in for Vargas' injured co-anchor, Bob Woodruff, who was seriously wounded in a roadside explosion in Iraq in late January. But Vargas did the newscast by herself last week and is scheduled to be alone behind the anchor desk again this week.

A month and a half after ABC's Bob Woodruff was seriously injured while traveling in a military convoy in Iraq, the evening newscast he co-anchored is still mired in uncertainty as network executives try to sort out how to keep it on track in his absence. Much of the internal debate is focused on who should replace him.

Incoming anchor Katie Couric swung by the CBS newsroom for the first time Wednesday, but the right-wing attack squads have already gotten a head start in trying to Rather-ize her.