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Blog: The Rest Of The Story
March 1, 2009
And now for a little “shop talk”…that’s what radio legend Paul Harvey would say on his “Paul Harvey News” show when he was about to discuss some news event in the world of media.
That shop talk Saturday night turned to the death of the iconic voice that was our trusted friend. Paul Harvey passed away Saturday at the age of 90.
What does the death of Paul Harvey have to do with NorthEscambia.com? Perhaps more than you realize.
“You know what the news is, in a minute, you’re going to hear…the rest of the story.”
“Stand by for news!” he would say. I remember hearing that booming Paul Harvey voice from the radio. I was pretty young, perhaps in elementary school. The hot summer air on granny’s porch in rural Alabama would be filled with that Midwestern voice that would bring us the news. The news might be the latest national headlines from the president, or it might be the story of a little old lady in Chicago that did something just a bit different than the rest of us.
Whatever the story, it always sounded equally important and interesting, regardless of the subject. Paul Harvey taught us that every person has a story, and, if you will just take the time to listen, that story can be intriguing no matter how mundane it may seem.
He was very plainspoken, weaving the story without being sensational. Sometimes he would interject his commentary, and somehow you would almost always agree with that voice from the little speaker.
As that young guy who spent those 15 minutes each day with that voice from Chicago, I had no idea what career path I would take. But this radio thing seemed pretty interesting. After all, this Paul Harvey guy must have made a pretty good living reading those ads for those big companies. Remember “Bankers Life and Casualty Company”? They sponsored Paul Harvey News for 30 years, from the 50’s to the 80’s.
I grew up in a small Alabama town, and I remember when FM radio came to town. It was much like modern day 2009, with the conversion to digital tv and the needed converter boxes. Our family car, a Ford LTD, had only an AM radio with those black selector push buttons. The new FM station was coming to town, and we where not going to be able to hear it in the car without one of those converters.
I remember the excitement of getting the FM converter box to hear the new station in town in our car. We had an FM radio in the house. We were far enough away from the next largest city that the new local FM was about the only FM station we could hear.
And there was Paul Harvey in that new FM radio format, that commanding voice sounding even stronger. But along with Paul Harvey, that new local station in town did local news right before Paul Harvey. There it was on the radio…local news about the people and places in our little town. It was no longer that AM radio station from the next big city with big city news, it was local news on our local FM.
I found that all very intriguing, and continued to think that having a job like Paul Harvey would be cool. But at that age, astronaut seemed pretty interesting too.
“Page…two…”
Fast forward to my senior year in high school. For me at that age, radio was for music and Casey Kasem’s American Top 40, not for Paul Harvey. He was no longer that friend that I listened to each day, but rather just a distant memory. But radio was about to become my friend.
The writer at our local weekly newspaper quit. The editor called the high school English teacher, hoping to find a graduate that might still be in town that could write. The odds of that were slim; graduating high school was usually followed by leaving our little town.
That English teacher recommended that the editor talk to me about writing for the paper. So there I was, a high school senior and now the one and only staff writer for the local paper. Understand that the local newspaper was very different then than local papers are today.
The presses would rumble the building every Wednesday afternoon, and the smell of ink would permeate the building. You could hear the presses outside the building, a rumble like a distant train shaking the ground. In the meantime, back on the main street of town, a lone paper box stood. People would line up, quarters in hand, to buy the paper. Sometime they would wait hours for those first copies to be put in the box. The editor of the paper would take the papers to the box himself; that was the most important job in the world every Wednesday afternoon, and he would do it himself.
One of my early writing assignments was to visit the local radio station to write a story about something they had done, or something they were doing…it escapes my memory what the story I wrote was even about. But the moment is still vivid.
There I was in the broadcast studio of the radio station, interviewing the radio host for the now forgotten story.
Buttons and knobs. I must admit that I’ve always loved buttons and knobs. The studio had plenty of those. This whole radio thing look pretty interesting, mostly due to the buttons and knobs.
“You have a good voice,” an employee of the station told me. “Here, read this,” he said, handing me a AP news story off the dot matrix printer. I read.
The next thing I knew, my first ever job at the newspaper had led to my second ever job doing news at the local radio station. Now I was covering stories in both print and on the air, my own little small town media empire. At the high stakes rate of about $5 an hour at the radio station, I was making two salaries for covering the same news story. I had found the ultimate way to make cash. It was a teen’s dream.
The radio station were I was working was not that first station in town I mentioned earlier. I was working for the competitor, and you had to listen to your competitor to know what they were doing.
There was that Paul Harvey guy, probably a decade after I first heard him, on the competing station. “Stand by for news!” was once again part of my daily life. If I were going to read the news on the radio station, I wanted to read it half as good as Paul Harvey. I’d listen to his style, his delivery technique and the way he crafted his words. His words were never fancy, never those big long “I’m smarter than you” words. They were simple words, like a brush they would paint a picture in your mind over the airwaves.
With simple words and long, dramatic pauses, he did not deliver the news. He pulled you into the news, making you part of each and every story.
Suddenly, this whole radio station “gig” became more than just a cash cow, it had become a passion. At 18-years old, I had discovered that small town news — where everyone has a story — was where I wanted to be.
I spent a few years at that small town radio station, reading the news — telling the daily story of what was going on in our small town. I eventually left the radio station and went to work for a newspaper in a larger town. The editor that had given me that first job while I was still in high school was right. In the newspaper business, you get ink in your veins and just can’t stay away.
Over the years, there were more newspaper and more radio stations in my future, along with other jobs that were usually media related in some way.
Thinking back to what the newspaper editor would say about ink in the veins, he might have been a little off, at least when it comes to my veins. I ended up with a passion for small town news, telling the stories that otherwise would never be heard.
All that eventually led you and I to be here today on NorthEscambia.com. That “itch” for small town news just never went away. I’ve always been a follower of technology, so the Internet just seemed to be logical place for our local news.
Paul Harvey began his career on AM radio. Then FM. Eventually, those Rest of the Story broadcasts were streamed on the Internet. But regardless of the delivery method, it was still a personal approach to the news.
Those hot, humid summer days listening to Paul Harvey were my early inspiration to become a storyteller of local community news. In that indirect way, Paul Harvey is responsible for NorthEscambia.com.
And now, you know…the rest of the story.
Paul Harvey . . . Good day.
Comments
3 Responses to “Blog: The Rest Of The Story”
He will be greatly missed. I grew up listening to all his stories. Some brought laughter, others brought tears. But each one was told with such heart.
I completely love Paul Harvey. The Rest of the Story will not be the same.
I have listened to Paul since the 70’s and I always loved his commentary and common sense. It was like listening to an old friend. I knew her was up there in age, but did not know he was 90 years of age. I loved to travel and would try to catch his short show while on the road. I was in the army and while on leave in Bangkok from Vietnam, the armed forces radio would have him on the air. He will be missed and I hope in a better place. We loved you Paul.