When I was a kid something happened so amazing we couldn’t beleive it as we watched. Right there on the evening news the newscasters were joking, laughing, and enjoying themselves while they delivered the news!

We thought something had gone wrong with the tv set and that someone was playing a joke on us. It was the early 1970’s and channel 7, ABC’s Eyewitness News broke with the stoic tradition of stark faced newsmen and turned into somewhat of a reflection of ourselves. They delivered the news, focused on the raw data but in their delivery the didn’t come off as drones but as real people who had real issues like the rest of us. Ratings boomed and legends were born and the sheer face of tv and radio news from then on changed to a more friendly, humane touch. Nowadays it’s a bit too over the top to the point of absurdity in many cases but it all began with Eyewitness News in NY.

If memory serves, Roger Grimsby, Bill Beutel, John Johnson, Melba Tolliver, Geraldo Rivera, Anna Bond, Doug Johnson, and the rest made us smile and put fear in the hearts of evil doers with their hard hitting reporting. It was a great time as Woodward and Bernstein were taking down President Nixon and his cronies and worldwide reporters found new courage and resources and we the people were being served the real news, no sugar coating it the way the Founding Fathers probably wanted it.

That team got me interested in the news biz. I remember one of the biggest kicks I’ve ever had is when in 1983 during a story about the bombing in Beirut Lebanon at the Marine Corps barracks, Roger Grimsby mentioned my name on the air. That’s a long story but I was working in a newsroom at the time at an historic newspaper and it was quite something.

Too bad nowadays the financial and military indtustrialists and tabloids have dominated. A great chance was lost but perhaps the internet has taken up the mantle of courageous journalism.

We’ll see.

Posted under EDITORIAL, ENTERTAINMENT, NEWS, POLITICS