This Concludes My Broadcast Day (at The AP)

Back when television stations would sign off the air late at night, they'd run color bars with an announcer saying something like, "and this concludes our broadcast day".

So for me at AP, "this concludes my broadcast day".  The next part of my journey is with Bankrate.com, as Washington Bureau Chief. It is a tremendous and exciting opportunity. 

For now though, I'd like to share some thoughts about the steps proceeding this day.

My recollections of AP go back about as far as any memories I have. That’s because my father had his own 11-year AP career in 5 cities going back to my birth, ending in St. Louis in 1971 when I was 10 years old.  

In the 60’s, I remember visiting the New York headquarters at Rockefeller Center and watching a “Photofax” machine receive images just minutes after a space launch at Cape Canaveral. There were teletype operators back then and tickertape used to help transmit the news. It was there that he wrote the national broadcast report for about 5 years. I have more vivid memories of the bureaus in Topeka and St. Louis.


Fast forward. Having worked in radio for about a decade, including while in high school and college in Kansas, and later in Buffalo, New York, I would be hired by the AP in Dallas in 1986 by the late Brad Krohn. 
 

We operated the regional “Sunbelt” bureau for AP Radio and  the “Texas AP Network”.  A year later, I was transferred to the Washington Broadcast News Center, or what has been called the "BNC". There, I have remained for the last 25 and a-half years.

What a trip it has been.  

Some 26 years ago, we were writing on clunky custom-made computers, each requiring two large floppy disks. Heavy cell phones used in the field were the size of lunch buckets. A fax was sent by placing a phone receiver in an awkward, ill-fitting plastic cradle.

It was in July of 1986 that I first stepped inside the AP bureau in Dallas' Southland Life Building. That month, the Dow crossed over the 1,900 level.  It is now above 13,000. We recorded audio interviews on a cassette recorder or on reel-to-reel tape. A few miles from the bureau, Southwest Airlines was a scrappy upstart company vying against a seemingly unstoppable giant also headquartered in the city, American Airlines.  The latter has since filed for bankruptcy.  

Through it all, the core principles of good journalism have remained the same. But the changes in the media industry have been breathtaking.

By my own rough estimates, I anchored approximately 8800 AP Radio newscasts (including several dozen in the past few weeks after an 18 year interlude). During the AP All-News-Radio era I did about 15,000 “Business Updates”, live and taped. I will always remember the incredible current and former colleagues who always delivered, sometimes in the face of tremendous adversity. I think about wars, 9/11, earthquakes, the fall of the Soviet Union, deadly destructive storms and a whopper of a financial crisis.

On a lighter note, scores of visions and anecdotes rattle inside my brain. They were while working the overnight and every other hour of the day, 7 days a week including holidays. Amid the work, there were plenty of side-splitting laughs between the deadlines. 

The work included those hourly radio newscasts and live special reports, television stand-ups in the field and in the newsroom working with our wonderful photographers, interviews with celebrities and political leaders, and with admirable, regular people. I covered the economy's ups and the downs, and before that, handled the music industry beat in the late 80s while I was a news anchor. 


It is our craft to work with words, but this is one instance where there are no sufficient expressions appropriately reflecting the deep appreciation I have for my experiences. These opportunities were afforded me by a variety of managers, most of whom have since departed. But most of all, I'll treasure my friendships with highly talented, hard working colleagues.  In the future here in Washington, I'll still be down the street in the National Press Building or covering a story. So whether online, on the air, or elsewhere, I shouldn't be hard to find.