Reporters, Radio

History

Radio reporting dates to the very beginnings of the medium. One of the first people to read news over the radio was Westinghouse Electric engineer Frank Conrad. He first read newspaper stories over the air in 1919. Westinghouse executive Harry Davis reported election-night results of the presidential race on November 2, 1920, an event often cited as the beginning of regular broadcasting.

In 1930, magazine editor Lowell Thomas initiated his regular network nightly news by reading 15-minute newscasts that were simulcast by NBC to the eastern half of the country and CBS to the western states. The program was called Lowell Thomas and the News. Radio reporting developed slowly during the Depression, limited by a “pressradio war” where newspapers tried to limit radio's use of news agency reports. That restriction in mid-decade forced larger stations in major markets to field their own reporters. The news agency restriction faded by the end of the decade. The late 1930s became a defining period for radio reporters, who were soon providing field reporting not just from America but also about the growing political crises in Europe and Asia that would lead to World War II.

CBS hired Edward R. Murrow as a manager of radio talks in 1935. Within a few years, now based in London, Murrow began to build the foundation of CBS News. Starting in 1938 he assembled a remarkable radio news war staff that would eventually include Charles Collingwood, Eric Severeid, William L. Shirer, and Howard K. Smith, among others. Murrow's own reporting often involved significant personal risk. His reports beginning with the words “This is… London” from London streets and rooftops during the 1940 German Blitz became classics. The combination of his evocative delivery and courageous storytelling encouraged people to listen to radio for news about the war. It was one thing to read about the war in the local newspaper, but thanks to Murrow and his colleagues at both CBS and NBC, American audiences could hear war updates much faster and in more vivid detail. By 1945, radio reporting had become a well-established form of journalism.

In the postwar years, radio news developed along two parallel lines—prestigious network reporting on regular newscasts and documentaries, and local station coverage that relied on news agency reports supplemented with local reporters. Despite the growth of television competition in the 1950s, news remained a mainstay of radio network programming.

In the 1960s, station owner Gordon McLendon and others modernized radio news by adding sound bites and natural sound from speeches, [Page 1209]press conferences, and interviews, in addition to live reporting. This approach, basic to today's radio reporting, came about in part because of the growing competition from television news. Many talented radio reporters migrated to television stations. By the peak of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, it was dubbed “The Living Room War” as the first conflict Americans watched instead of only hearing it on radio.

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