Newscasters, Radio

Origins

In a sense, Guglielmo Marconi, one of the pioneers of broadcasting, can also be considered the medium's first “newscaster.” In September 1898, he placed wireless equipment on two steamships that were part of a welcoming parade in New York harbor for American Admiral George Dewey and relayed information about the event to The New York Herald. It, in turn, printed a story that featured both Marconi's information and details about the remarkable way in which it had been obtained.

For our purposes, “radio newscaster” means “one who reads scripted news aloud as part of a radio broadcast.” This is to differentiate the newscaster from a reporter who describes an ongoing event on the air (such as NBC's Graham McNamee describing the return of transatlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh in June 1927 or the stunning eyewitness account by WLS's Herbert Morrison of the explosion of the German dirigible Hindenburg over Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937). These were exciting examples of a practice common in the early days of radio. But regularly scheduled radio newscasts, or summaries of the day's events, were relatively rare until the 1938 broadcast of what would become the first CBS World News Roundup, described below in more detail.

Early station newscasts (and those only in the largest markets) were typically read by a station announcer who often lacked any training as a journalist. In the 1920s, Harold Arlin of Pittsburgh station KDKA, credited with being the first fulltime professional radio announcer in America, might provide news headlines one minute, read a community service announcement the next, then broadcast a prize fight or a football game later in the day.

An important distinction (but one not often made in the early days) existed between radio commentary and news. News reporters made the phone calls, tracked down sources, and presented the facts as they found them, while commentators gave their opinions (one book on radio journalism describes them as “mellifluous posers”).

Radio newscasts, as envisioned by such early practitioners as Edward R. Murrow, would instead strive for an accurate reporting of facts and a minimum of personal opinion. Radio newscasts became essential as world tensions grew toward war in the late 1930s. The radio news equivalent of “The Big Bang” came in the spring of 1938, when CBS broadcast a program featuring live reports from several European cities, ushering in an era of journalists who became among the best known in radio history.

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