sioux city

Meet my first news director, a chain-smoking, mullet-rocking legend who continues to surprise

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April 4, 2018. Dave Carew. “Happy Birthday, Tedd! Have a great time full of mischief.”

I type the name of my first boss into Facebook’s search bar. I left Sioux City, Iowa 14 years ago, but I often think about the man who gave me my start in broadcast news. His page pops up. Tedd O’Connell. Green Bay, Wisconsin. A black-and-white photo of a newsman in a trench coat.

That’s Tedd. But Tedd’s been dead for more than a decade.

April 4, 2017. Justin Roberts. “Happy Birthday Tedd!! Hope heaven is a party that never stops!”

This seems off. Tedd wasn’t the social media type, and Facebook was in relative infancy when he fell sick years ago. But this wouldn’t be Tedd’s first surprise.

April 4, 2016. Molly Fitch. “Happy Birthday, Tedd. Hope you’re snacking on donut holes and listening to Eminem upstairs today.”

Growing up near New York, attending college near Chicago, I was unprepared for the flat skyline of Sioux City. I was less prepared for my first boss to rock a full-coiffed mullet and a raspy voice born of a thousand cigarettes.

April 4, 2015. Derek Wittenburg. “Happy birthday…..Tedanator with us all.”

For 15 years, Tedd was the Ron Burgundy of Madison, Wisconsin. He flew to Cuba for a story and met Castro. He broke major stories and won major awards. Then he took over newsrooms. A decade removed from his final time on the anchor desk, he landed in Iowa to run a fledgling third-place news station. At some point I should have wondered if Tedd viewed this job as beneath his stature and legacy. Tedd never gave us that choice.

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PODCAST EPISODE #63: Here’s how my journey in journalism affects my view as a dad.

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A few nights ago, I sat in my living room at 3 AM, feeding my daughter while contemplating my first Father’s Day as a dad, when one single moment crystallized my entire fatherly experience:

My baby spit milk into my mouth.

I couldn’t have planned it. I probably can’t replicate it. I had just pulled Olivia’s bottle and perched her on my lap. I had patted her back to burp her, then clutched her against my chest to soothe her. We had sat silently, her head leaning against mine, when I turned my cheek to give hers a kiss. As my lips puckered, Olivia swiveled her head my way and sent an ounce of milk fountaining from her mouth. Most landed on my shirt, some across my face. The rest settled inside my jaw. Dignity.

But it wasn’t her action that encapsulated my life as a dad. It was my reaction. I pffted out the milk, looked at my child, shook my head and laughed out loud in a pitch-black room. I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t grossed out. I felt grateful.

I’ve been waiting so long to be a dad, I thought. A little milk in the mouth is all part of the package.

I often wonder how my job as a journalist affects my outlook as a father, and it’s not always obvious. But in moments like the Great Spitting Incident of 2018, it becomes clear. Same when the twentieth person of the week asks me, “Are you sleeping at all yet?” I am! And what little sleep I lose hasn’t bothered me. Neither have the middle-of-the-night feeds, exploding poops, and impromptu workouts from carrying Olivia on my shoulder for 20 minutes.

I can shrug it off in Atlanta because I remember Sioux City. (more…)

The value of “thank you” (with help from Bill Plaschke)

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The expression is as old as time (or at least as old as “How I Met Your Mother”):

Nothing good happens after 2 AM.

Allow me to offer an exception, starring a budding TV reporter, a veteran newspaper writer, last month’s Winter Olympics, and an easy expression of gratitude.

It is the result — but, I hope, not the end result — of an action I took ten years ago.

In 2004, I had not yet received my current job as a reporter in a major city. I had not yet covered an Olympics, a Democratic Convention, or any major news event. I had not yet achieved many of the successes to which I aspired.

I had barely passed my first year as a professional.

And I was struggling.

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The toughest question to answer for college journalists

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It never fails.

Whenever I speak to a group of young journalists or communications students, I always receive a question or two that either stump me or touch me emotionally.

This past week, I had the pleasure of conducting a leadership forum for scholars of the Posse Foundation. The organization provides scholarships and support for up-and-coming leaders who, as they put it, “might have been overlooked by traditional college selection processes.” I spoke at the winter conference for Posse’s Atlanta chapter, spending nearly an hour with a few dozen students interested in communications as a whole.

I offered my advice for how to get ahead, answered important questions about how to network and build a strong portfolio, and had a genuinely interesting back-and-forth with a group of students who, I believe, will be quite successful in their chosen fields.

But, I found, the toughest questions they asked had nothing to do with how to “make it” or “get ahead”.

They dealt with how to balance one’s life in the process.

First, a student asked the following: “Since you work in such a stressful business, how do you still manage to have a life and not let work run your life?”

It’s a great question — and a difficult one to answer.

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