A Brief Introduction
Thanks to those of you who read my first column and to those who subscribed to read future essays. My intent is to write about media issues, usually Iowa-based, but occasionally on national media issues.
Now that the first column is launched, I want to provide a brief bit of background. I’m a blissfully retired journalist, having spent 43 years in Iowa radio and television. I’m a graduate of the fine School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, my home state. In 1976, I moved to Des Moines, having never set foot in Iowa before. WHO radio hired me as a reporter and eventually I anchored a two-hour afternoon news block. It was the heyday of radio news, but the pay was terrible and I didn’t see much future in it. So, when a TV news reporter job opened at KCCI-TV, I applied and got it.
I love reporting. It’s a fascinating job. Reporters are paid to spend their day learning as much as they can about a particular topic, and then boiling it down to perhaps a minute-and-a-half for busy viewers. I witnessed amazing things and awful things. I met terrific people and terrible people. Mostly, I covered politics. Chuck Grassley’s and Tom Harkin’s first campaigns for Senate. Terry Branstad’s first campaign for Governor. The Iowa legislature. Presidential candidates galore. I enjoyed politicians of all persuasions in those days. Maybe I was naïve, but in general I thought most of them were in it for the right reasons. Not so sure about that these days.
Eventually, I moved into co-anchoring the 10 pm newscast at KCCI, succeeding the legendary Russ Van Dyke. I was lucky to anchor with Kevin Cooney, Connie McBurney and Pete Taylor. They made me a better anchor. After five years of that, I was SUCH a good anchor that the boss asked me to consider a career in management. So I spent the next 30 years as news director of the station, responsible for all news content, hiring, budgeting, research and strategy.
Being a TV news director is enormously stressful. Finding good people. Keeping good people. Growing the ratings in an extremely competitive field. Motivating staff. Responding to viewers. Long hours. Breaking news blowing up weekend plans with my family. I was terrible at first, but my bosses let me figure it out over time. Unlike most TV news types, I was lucky to have a long career at one station, thanks to patient bosses and station owners committed to quality news coverage.
My TV news career began by shooting stories on film. Then we moved to videotape. Now, it’s all digital – hours of video on a chip the size of a postage stamp. And meantime, we added websites, mobile apps, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. It pays to be flexible.
It’s hard to sum up 43 years in a few paragraphs, but at the end of 2018, I was ready to pass the torch to the next generation. I miss all the nutty personalities in the newsroom. They are a special breed. But I don’t miss the stress, and neither does my wife, Laura, who kept me sane. We have three grown kids, no grandkids, no pets, but lots of interests. We volunteer a lot. We ride bikes together. We take piano lessons. We read. We love to travel, although Covid has clipped our wings a bit. We have a wonderful relationship despite one fundamental difference. I love my hometown St. Louis Cardinals. She’s a Cubs fan. As they say, it’s a friendly rivalry.
With that background out of the way, my goal is to write roughly once a week. I hope to provide some insight into media issues, how journalists are covering the news these days, point out some good work and some substandard work when necessary.
Thanks for reading and thanks for subscribing. A free subscription is fine. If you choose to pay, please know I will donate all proceeds to the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, which does great work fighting for open records, open courtrooms, and open meetings in Iowa.
I'm very excited about this, hopeful to read some insight into what inthesamhill has happened to journalists writing without bias.
Dave,
It’s a gift to us all to get to read your posts. You have an invaluable perspective and articulate it masterfully.
Thanks for doing this!