Going…and Going…and Going…

This month — June 23rd to be exact — I will begin my 39th year in broadcasting.

It’s hard to believe I’ve come this far for this amount of time. I say that because when I went to college at Clemson University my declared major was…chemical engineering. That was not my destiny I would later discover.

A friend of mine who worked at Clemson’s campus radio station invited me up and gave me an opportunity to read the news…and I was hooked.

From there I transferred to the College of Charleston and wrote for the campus newspaper until I got the chance to intern at WKCN-AM for college credit. That summer, the station hired me to read news, run the audio board and eventually host a few hours of a jazz show on a sister station.

From there the plump kid you see above moved over to WTMA-AM to do news and sports for several years. That was before another unexpected opportunity. WCSC-TV’s news director Don Feldman called me in to offer me an opportunity to work there. I had been there as an editor behind the scenes. This time it was to be (*gulp*) on the air!

I spent five great years at Live 5 News as a reporter and — eventually — weekend anchor. Then it was on to WPTY/WLMT-TV in Memphis to report the news.

Good times. Great people. But…I missed radio. I left TV for WREC-AM in Memphis. Stints at two great radio stations followed: WPTF-AM in Raleigh, NC where I learned at the feet of fabulous broadcasters such as Mike Blackman, Mike Raley and Lisa Price. Then there was North Carolina Public Radio WUNC which is a nationally-respected NPR affiliate.

Fox News Radio in New York City has been my home for the last nine years.

A piece of every stop I’ve made stays with me. I hope to continue to 40 years..and beyond. If there should be a next chapter, I’ve given some thought to sharing what I’ve learned over these nearly four decades with the next wave of journalists. How the public consumes news has changed. That is undeniable. However, what has not changed is the basic job of any reporter: to learn what is not commonly known…and to share that with a public that needs to know it.

I’m what they call a ‘dinosaur’ in the industry — a guy who still uses an old-school Reporter’s Notebook to take notes instead of iPhone or iPad apps.