I've held a lot of jobs over the years, but my professional career began in the Spring of 1971 when I was hired to do the news at WARA radio in Attleboro, Massachusetts. I had taken a five month, part-time course in broadcasting, but decided I couldn't handle being rejected by all the small radio stations in eastern Massachusetts, so I first applied at all the major radio stations in Boston. Most ignored me, at a couple someone spoke with me only briefly, but the manager of WJIB was kind enough to have me cut an audition tape. He listened to it, explained what I was doing wrong and right, and made suggestions. To him, a large Thank You.As the newest member of the three-member team at WARA, I was assigned to the late afternoon and evening shift, five days a week, plus Sunday morning sign-on. That meant I produced and anchored each newscast from three to seven pm. In the evening I went out to cover stories in Attleboro or nearby Mansfield. The stories involved meetings of governing bodies: mostly city councils and school committees. To really keep on top of upcoming events I attended planning and zoning board meetings (that's where I learned how to make any story interesting). I also covered the meetings of the Attleboro Charter Review Commission, where I had a better attendance record than most members.
I had a lot of luck in the early days of my broadcast news career at WARA. The meetings I attended were also covered by journalists for the Providence Journal, the Pawtucket Times, and the Attleboro Sun. Each of the three newspaper reporters had more experience than me, so I watched them for reactions to events or comments so I would have an idea what would be interesting enough to become news stories. After just a few weeks I was making those decisions without their input. Checking their stories in the newspapers the next day against my choices, I found myself usually on the same track.
WARA also had several stringers (part-time reporters) who would cover stories in surrounding towns, write them, and call them in to a tape recorder at the station. I would transcribe those stories and edit them for length. Studying the writing styles of the stringers helped my writing, while I also learned about editing, something many reporters never run into.
After a year in radio I applied for a job at WCSH television in Portland, Maine. I didn't really expect to get a job because of my limited experience, but a couple of weeks after driving to Portland for an audition and an interview I was offered a job. In those days (mid-1972) the junior person was assigned to anchor the eleven o'clock news. I would arrive at the station at three pm and help put the six pm newscast together. My primary job was re-writing the wire copy from the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI). I was also assigned to re-write stories filed by stringers for WCSH (that put my editing skills to good use).
Eventually, I was assigned to complete a project started much earlier by others at the station. Hundreds of feet of 16mm color film had been shot before my arrival at the station highlighting one of the first kidney transplants performed at the Maine Medical Center in Portland. The film showed the removal of a kidney from a live donor, the cleaning of the kidney, and the kidney being put into the recipient. There also was an interview with the woman who had received the kidney, as well as interviews with the surgeons and other doctors involved in the case. The station management wanted me to create a half-hour news special.
The film in surgery was spectacular, but most of the interviews were not. I rescheduled and refilmed most of them, then I spent my own time on afternoons and weekends at the station learning about film editing while writing a half-hour piece. The finished product included only eighteen minutes of film, so in order to make the project visually interesting, with the heroic efforts of the evening production crew, a half-hour program was put on two-inch tape, mixing film with live shots of me in the studio, with chroma-key behind me on one screen and rearscreen projection behind me on an adjoining screen. We did it in one take because we didn't have editing capabilities for the two-inch tape. The program, Witness to a Miracle, aired once before some production person in a big hurry one day erased the tape so he could record a 30 second commercial. We later reproduced the program on film as an educational tool for interested groups.
After two years on the eleven o'clock newscast, introducing the station to the use of chroma-key and recorded late-night updates, I moved to days and general assignment reporting. I covered statewide politics at the statehouse in Augusta, local politics, police and fire stories, court cases, and countless news conferences.
In October 1979 I left WCSH and took a year off.
I went back to work in radio in October, 1980 when I was hired by the Maine Information Radio Network. I was assigned to open a bureau in Portland to complement another bureau in Bangor, and a half dozen reporters working from the main office in Augusta. Our network provided hourly newscasts to a number of radio stations across Maine. I left the network after only a few months to join WYNZ radio in Scarboro, Maine. I was there, off and on, until 1993 when the station was sold and I was let go.
I got a job in the manufacturing sector, and to my surprise the company made broadcast equipment. Four years later I left, and with the encouragement of my wife I went back to college to earn a degree.
Of course, I held other jobs over the years.