Barbara Walters might never have become a powerful force in broadcast journalism had she lacked the chutzpah to extract a promise from her bosses at NBC News in 1973.

As she explained it to me, she had already worked at the "Today" show for a dozen years, serving first as a writer and then as the "Today girl" on set - a bubbly balance to the program's male host, the journalist Frank McGee. If M...