Chapter 4/An investigative reporter on TV

I had majored in magazine journalism at Southern Illinois University, but as a 30-year-old reporter in Chicago I found that the days of mass circulation magazines were dwindling. Life magazine, Look and my own employer, Today Health, were about to go under because they had lost too much advertising to television. TV had become king of the mass audience.

I concluded I was in the wrong business. I wanted to have the impact that TV could bring to a story. I was inspired by 60 Minutes on CBS, which had just begun with hosts Mike Wallace and Harry Reasoner. In fact, I wrote to Reasoner about becoming a writer for 60 Minutes. I still have the letter he wrote back to me on his typewriter more than 30 years ago, advising that there weren't really writers in television news. "The producers and reporters write the shows," he said.

Although 60 Minutes didn't need me, the stories I was writing for Today's Health were getting me national attention and invitations to go on TV talk shows.

My first television appearance was October 7, 1969, the day I turned 30. WJZ-TV's Contact show with Arnold Zenker in Baltimore, Maryland, paid for my trip there to talk about my series on Hunger in America in Today's Health. (The series was reprinted in a book entitled, Hunger, Problems of American Society, which also included Charles Kuralt's famous Harvest of Shame documentary on CBS-TV.)

Another story I wrote on quackery got me on WGN-TV in Chicago.

In 1971, I learned that a new TV news show in Green Bay, Wisconsin was starting up from scratch and needed an investigative reporter like me. When I was hired by TV-11, they also wanted me to be their weekend anchorman. "Just think, me an anchorman," I said to my wife, Chris.

I was so busy at TV-11 learning a new business that I asked Chris to find us a house where I could walk to work. You can do that in little Green Bay. We ended up with a home three blocks from TV-11 and famous Lambeau Field.

In Chicago, I had spent three hours a day commuting back and forth to the Loop. Now it took just five minutes to get home. Green Bay worked out nicely for my family. Although I sometimes worked 12-hour days, I could eat lunch with my wife and two little children on many days. When the Packers made touchdowns on Sunday afternoon games, I would open up our front door and the roar of the crowd rolled into our living room like thunder.

I knew I was a pretty good investigative reporter, but how would I do as an anchor? I was worried about that aspect of the job even though it was an honor to be asked. That first weekend I anchored they told me at the last minute I would be the weatherman, too.

On Saturday, I was pretty rough on the air, I admit that. I thought I did a lot better on Sunday. I wasn't stumbling so much and mispronouncing so many local Indian names such as Shawano and Ashwaubenon. And maybe people wouldn't remember that I predicted sunshine when it rained all day.

But after just one weekend, the news director called me into his office and said I was no longer an anchorman. He wanted me to stick to consumer reporting. Fortunately, I was a lot better reporter than an anchor.