Lou Grant

After being fired as news director of a Minneapolis television station, Lou Grant heads to Los Angeles to find a new job. He looks up an old friend, Charlie Hume, managing editor of the Los Angeles Tribune, who suggests Grant take over the city desk on the newspaper. Lou accepts the challenge but is shocked to learn the final decision rests with the publisher, Margaret Pynchon.

A young terrorist invades the Tribune, holding Rossi and other reporters hostage in the newsroom. Rossi covers a robbery-shooting in which a store owner has killed a young assailant. Rossi is kidnapped at gunpoint by a vengeful brother and ordered to rewrite the story, defending the dead youth.

Lou's old newspaper pal, Jack Riley, offers Lou the chance to interview with a business tycoon who has been mysteriously missing. There is one problem: Riley is as notorious a con artist as he is renowned as a reporter.

Lou is shocked to find that the attractive woman he has been trying to meet is the rival editor from the "Today" section of the Tribune. Still the traditional newspaper man he was trained to be, Lou cannot adjust to the "Today" section (formerly the women's section) expending into different areas, especially his own. When a young woman reporter from "Today" stumbles upon a murder while on assignment, Lou orders her back to the office and sends his own reporter, Rossi, to cover the story. Resenting Lou's abrupt actions, the reporter's editor fights back, leading to a battle of the sexes.

Pursuing a story on American Nazis, Billie enters the Brown Shirt headquarters, uncovering shocking information. Members of an American Nazi party break up a Jewish demonstration, inspiring Billie to write an in-depth story on a racist organization.

Lou becomes uncomfortably involved with a Tribune reporter's widow and can't find the guts to tell her to get lost. After experiencing his first tremblor from an earthquake, Lou can't react as casually as his co-workers; he sends Rossi to cover a story about cockroaches predicting earthquakes.

Following up an apparent routing gang shooting in the barrio of East Los Angeles, Billie finds herself personally involved in the drama she is covering. Billie's curiosity to investigate the crime leads her and Lou to East Los Angeles where violence is often a way of life.

Rossi and Billie indulge in the fine art of scooping - one of the oldest and most tempting techniques in news reporting. Billie's prolonged effort to report a kidnapping story accurately causes her to miss a deadline; meanwhile, Rossi suffers the reverse humiliation when his speed exceeds his accuracy. Though both try to improve, Lou is still held responsible for both errors.

A manslaughter case prompts Lou to observe the courtroom conduct of an elderly judge suspected of senility. When the Tribune editor has a bewildering firsthand confrontation with the judge, Lou orders a full scale investigation, questioning the man's mental competence.

Lou fears that the pressure he's put on Rossi to get more involved in his stories has forced Rossi to take unnecessary risks while doing an in-depth feature on mental hospitals. At the same time, Lou is butting heads with the Tribune's lawyer over the paper's coverage of an obscenity trial.

A battered wife, frightened and unwilling, is the subject for Billie's series of articles on wife-beating. At a housewarming party given by Lou, Billie finds out that she could have researched part of her story right in the Tribune's city room.

Lou and Charlie Hume face a difficult problem: how to tell their publisher that the new man in her life may be more interested in her paper than in romance. To add to their dilemma, Mrs. Pynchon's nephews are only too eager to throw their support to the publishing tycoon, who has a history of turning once fine newspapers into sensational tabloids.

Two Christmas stories backfire on Lou and the staff. Billie's moving story about a homeless family winds up with a surprising twist and, at the same time, Rossi's investigation of a respected politician unexpectedly breaks wide open.

A jumbo jet is in trouble above Los Angeles and Lou's coverage of the story turns up a troubling piece of information: Charlie Hume's daughter is on board.

Lou incurs public outrage over the Tribune's coverage of a local college football cheating scandal.

As assassination attempt leads Lou on a search for a mysterious hero, and his feeling guilty for the personal tragedy that follows.

A talented artist's faith in his friend, Lou, is tested when Lou fights to save his life's work from destruction.

Lou is plunged into the world of the Hare Krishna movement when Tribune editor Charlie Hume fears his son is lost to the strange religion.

Rossi suspects the new, attractive woman reporter at the Tribune is getting information by sleeping with a powerful politician.

Lou defies a C.I.A. request to get a local espionage story.

Rossi's friend is killed and he may be next in line when he pursues a sensitive story involving a chemical plant allowing radiation leakage.

Lou learns he has cancer and must undergo surgery.