Nows and Forevers

You don’t go long in journalism, without saying goodbye to a laid-off colleague. It took less than a year into my career, and it’s been a constant ever since. I’m feeling that pain all over again with the shutting down of WCBS Newsradio 880. It’s been hard listening to each one of these anchors, reporters, producers, traffic reporters and others working behind the scenes to say goodbye. The first tranche was last Friday. Thursday and today were the final hours for people I’ve listened to for years: Wayne Cabot, Brigitte Quinn, Paul Murnane, Craig Allen, Tom Kaminski, Ray Hoffman, Sean Adams, I could go on and on.

They’ve all been pros, right up to the very end, even as listeners have probably gotten choked up. I know I have.

I’m glad they’ve had the opportunity to go out like that. While I’m not happy with Audacy for the decision, I praise its grace for letting an icon come to an end on its own terms. Journalism is an often cruel business and you don’t mostly get a chance to say goodbye, and sometimes you don’t get to say when you leave the stage. It’s a lot like life. James Thurber likened journalism to falling backward onto an open box of carpentry tools. It is, sometimes.

But WCBS, whose all-news format is two months older than me, I thought it would be on the air right up until Armageddon, reporting it all, just as it always did.

I take this personally because I can’t think of a time when WCBS hasn’t been in my ears. I’ve relied upon the news, invited the voices into my life, reported alongside their journalists in Connecticut and New York, even one time was heard on WCBS when I worked at The Hollywood Reporter. My parents even went to BU with one of the WCBS legends, Ben Farnsworth. The first time I saw a WCBS microphone at a news scene in Westport, Connecticut, I thought to myself, I made it.

Not only have I spent almost two-thirds of my life in Connecticut and New York, but the WCBS clear channel booms everywhere I’ve lived (other than two years in California). I’ve depended on it for the news, turned to it when the chips were down, laughed at the stories and poems of Charles Osgood and Dave Ross and the quips of anchors from Jim Donnelly to Wayne Cabot and so many others. The traffic reports of Tom Kaminski and others have kept me from many jams. And the steady voice and expertise of Craig Allen, who has been on WCBS since I was in high school, has been a lifesaver. It was Craig we listened to in September 1985 when Hurricane Gloria barreled from the Atlantic to Long Island and then the Sound and right into our house.

WCBS should have gotten all the awards for their coverage of 9/11 and its aftermath. I heard a fair amount of it live, in between my own bouts of reporting and editing on that day as a New York newspaper journalist. You can listen to it online, if you can stand it. They were at the top of their game that day and the days afterward.

Their longtime slogan was “more than just the headlines,” a not-so-subtle dig at their rival 1010 WINS. I’ve always known that WCBS was more than just the headlines. My dad had WCBS on constantly in the ’70s and after a while, even when I was 10 or 11, I started putting it on wherever I was and all through the night. There was something alluring about a constant stream of news in The Greatest City in the World, something powerful when big stories broke and their blanket coverage, and to be honest, comforting that when you were up in the middle of the night for whatever reason, WCBS was there, live, too.