Gibson, 'World News' in Boston tonight

ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson" has been traveling the country in recent weeks, reporting about how the economy has affected places outside Washington and New York. Tonight, it's Boston, with a focus on Fenway Park. Gibson -- who spends a lot of his weekends on the Cape -- will report on the Red Sox's business model, interviewing team chairman Tom Werner. I spoke to him briefly last week about the report and the TV news. "World News" airs tonight at 6:30 on Channel 5.

Q: This sort of sounds like an elaborate excuse to hang out at Fenway Park.
A: You have analyzed it very acutely.

Q: What can the Red Sox tell us about the economy?
A: We talked about doing the Harvard endowment or whatever, but I'm not sure how relatable that is to people. We just thought the Red Sox are a really good example of an operation that knows its business and sticks to its business. And given the expansion of Yankee Stadium...staying in that park, staying intimate, staying in touch with the people of New England - it's an interesting story.

Q: What have you learned as you've traveled for these stories?
A: New York and Washington are rather myopic. I think we have found that people are aware of what's going on in Washington, but they're far more concerned with their local communities and the variety of hardship or the spread of the hardship is not uniform. We were down in Texas where, interestingly enough, the police department's hiring 500 people. California has a 10 percent plus unemployment rate and a much more discouraging situation.

Q: And do you have a general sense of what people are feeling? We keep hearing signs that things are on the upswing.
A: Look, how much can you do in one day or two days of traveling? It's very impressionistic. I Generally as a country, I think we're very optimistic. Unemployment - for the most part, it's not as bad as people have feared. Consumer confidence is up. Whether the market is rational right now, there is a certain exuberance on Wall Street.

Q: How has it been so far, dealing with the Obama Administration?
A: It's a honeymoon period. Any president gets a honeymoon. If everything went sour on him tomorrow, people would say, "Well, you haven't been asking the [tough] questions. I think we have. There's a general willingness to let him give this automobile situation a try, give the stimulus package a try, to give the white collar bailouts at the banks a try, to give him his budgeting priorities at the moment. For the most part, the public is, I think, enormously understanding and willing to give him wide latitude, and we'll see how long that honeymoon lasts.

Q: I've got to ask you about the TV news buzz of the moment, Brian Williams' interview with President Obama, which included a plug of "The Tonight Show..."
A: I'm going to stay off it. That's NBC's deal and they did what they did and it speaks for itself.