Once again, I lucked out by being born a middle-class American in 1952. I came of age at one of the absolute peaks of American journalism. Newspapers were on a downward slide, but the survivors were surviving. Radio news was mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Jobs galore for a man with a great face for radio. (That is, not a blow-dried  news-model).

In 1927, in exchange for the use the public’s broadcast spectrum, radio stations were required to serve  in the “public interest, convenience, or necessity.” The FCC, always a supine regulator, at some point (I can’t find the date on the Internet) stopped requiring regular newscasts on all stations. Oops! Except for a few all-news stations, there went radio news—except for Rip Reed, the staffer who reads the AP Radio Wire out loud. Even those jobs are gone.

To be continued…