Peter Nolan - News Stories

W hen I left television news for good in 1986 I brought with me the scripts I had written over the years in Chicago and I put them in boxes. And I put them up in the attic where they rested until I moved to another, smaller house after all our kids had left home.

The scripts came with me and they were placed up in the rafters of our attached garage because there was no attic in the new house. There they remained for another nine or so years until I brought them down and began to sort through them.

I even bought some loose leaf folders and one of those punch hole gadgets and arranged the scripts in these folders according to date.

For awhile I wasnt sure why I was doing this. I think I wanted to have them for my children and my grandchildren. Probably I wanted to let them know Papa was a broadcast journalist during a very interesting period of the twentieth century, the 60s, 70s and 80s.

I worked in Television News in its infancy. And I was there many years later when it probably began its decline. I was at a television station in the mid 1960s when the entire staff gathered in a studio. The owner pulled a switch and the audience watched their picture go from black and white to full color. We went from film to video tape. In the early days women at the stations where I worked had jobs as secretaries, book keepers, and receptionists. At WKBN TV in Youngstown, Ohio, there was one woman in our newsroom, Doris Saloom, the secretary. In my mind she was capable of running the place but her title was newsroom secretary. When I came to Chicago in 1968 I was writing for a pioneering woman anchor, Jorie Lueloff. When I wrote on the midnight newscast my boss was a young female producer, Lucyna Migala. Valetta Press, secretary to the famous old commentator, Len OConnor, was promoted to network field producer. Women took on jobs as camera operators and sound technicians. By the time I was through, women may have outnumbered the men. People of color started coming to work in our newsroom. NBC was a leader in this effort. It was good.

I dont pretend to be that important. I was in the business before radio and television news people had gained the celebrity status they have today, although the transition was definitely beginning in the eighties. The biggest, most visible job I ever had was delivering a nightly commentary on the ten oclock news on Channel 5 (NBC) in Chicago from 1978 to 1981. Ive included some of those commentaries in one of the chapters. Its funny as so many years pass, the old issues become the new issues. I remember when I was in Niagara Falls, New York in 1963, one of the big issues was something called railroad relocation. Like so many American towns and cities automobiles were being delayed by trains crossing main roads. One of our listeners sent me a clipping from and old Niagara Fall Gazette in the early 1900s. The banner headline read: City Council to tackle railroad relocation.

Most of the stories in this book were broadcast at one time or another. The few that were not were stories I came upon that I found compelling. My hope is that you, the reader, will have the same impression.

About a half century ago someone in the newsroom at WMAQ-TV Chicago clipped a cartoon from the New Yorker and posted it on the bulletin board, It showed a man standing in front of a closed. door Hes confronted by a TV reporter with microphone and camera. Youll never believe whats happening in this room, the man exclaims. Tell me about it says the reporter.