There are two truly great scenes in "Broadcast News," the beloved 1987 James L. Brooks movie about the TV news business. One is when Albert Brooks's character auditions for the anchor job, and the other is when William Hurt's suave but dim hotshot shows him how it's done. You root for Albert Brooks's guy because he's qualified – he actually knows the details of the news he's reading off the teleprompter. But when he gets behind the desk, he has a total meltdown. It's hard to watch, so bad that your sympathies start to turn. Why did this egghead think he could do this? Hurt, on the other hand, can do the job in his sleep, even though he couldn't pick Arafat out of a lineup. He gives a virtuosic performance under pressure without losing his cool. Brooks's character's great failing is that he underestimates the talents of his rival. He doesn't understand the skill necessary to get the job he thought he deserved. You can't just know the news; you have to know how to tell people about it.

Sheila Weller's The News Sorority takes a look at three figures who know a thing or two about the news they're reporting, as well as how to deliver it. They're important to journalism, the evolution of television, and pop culture at large. The book documents the backgrounds and careers of Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, and Christiane Amanpour. And, like in "Broadcast News," there's even a bid for an opening as an evening news anchor. Unlike the movie, though, it pays a reasonable amount of attention to gender politics in television.

Sawyer was a Kentucky judge's daughter who worked for Nixon before going into TV news. Couric was a cheerleader in Virginia who idolized her older sisters, who would pretend to report the news from Cairo holding a fake microphone in front of an imaginary camera. In her own words, she "wormed her way into" ABC through charm and thin family connections as a young woman and would eventually be the first solo female anchor in the six-thirty slot. Amanpour, born in England and raised in Iran, arrived at CNN when it was being run out of a dingy Atlanta basement with no bathroom and pushed her way onto television at a time when it was practically a given that women had to be blonde to be on TV.

These are serious newswomen who have to be just as concerned with likability as they are with the news. They don't really get to choose between being a brainy Brooks or charming Hurts – they need to be both. In The News Sorority, readers see how much skill and determination that takes.