Roy Hardee in the WNCT newsroom. Photo credit: WNCT

A good newsman from Eastern North Carolina died this week. As a matter of fact, he died in his wife’s arms. If you have never heard about Roy Hardee, you should visit Stewart Pittman’s nice post, read the Associated Press story or watch the piece WNCT-TV aired.

(Side note: Holy cow, anchor Alan Hoffman still works at WNCT?! He was newish when I worked there in ahem 1987-1988!)

When I met Roy Hardee, I was 21 or barely 22, fresh out of UNC’s School of Journalism, but with three years of broadcast news experience, all in radio. He was in his 50′s and had a gravely voice, a constant harrumphing cough and a piercing stare. WNCT-TV wasn’t a station with bells and whistles, the pay sucked and the equipment was dismal. That’s where I began my career in television news.

Since I was an assignment editor, I saw a lot of Roy Hardee during my shift. Well, I saw a lot of him in his office. His phone glued to his ear, Roy knew how to sniff out news, find a source and call in a news tip like no one’s business. He was so good at calling in tips that the Associated Press named an award after him. The Roy Hardee award was given to the person who had provided the most tips to the AP in the Carolinas. Roy Hardee won it twice.

Roy figures in a story I like to tell about my early career. One day I was riding the desk, sending my crews out on stories across a wide swath of Eastern North Carolina. Crews is a misnomer — our reporters were one-man bands. Roy came out of his office, and stood over the AP wire. In those days, pre-internet, the news stories were actually printed on flimsy paper at certain times of the day. If your printer jammed or ran out of ink, you didn’t have the news. Period.  When you figured that out, you’d have to call up the AP in Raleigh and ask them to refeed the state or national news you’d missed, and it was a Very Big Deal.

But I digress. There’s Roy Hardee, standing over the wire, watching the news come in. When he sees the item he wants, he rips the wire, rips off the story he was looking for and takes it back into his office, a little smile playing around the corner of his mouth. And Roy’s not really a smiler, you know?

During our six o’clock newscast I found that that both of our competitors had a big story that we had somehow missed. And it’s my job as assignment editor not to miss this kind of stuff. I was nervous when I went to Roy’s office to admit that I had missed a story everyone else had. Roy was the kind of boss who wouldn’t lose his temper or harangue you  exactly, but he hated to miss a story and we hated to let him down. He would just look at you, make that little cough and then rumble something about “Try harder”, “Turn up the scanners” or his favorite, “Work the phone.”

Turns out, they got it from the AP wire. From a tip Roy had called in, and then ripped off the wire for his file. Forgetting to tell me. Roy apologized about that.

He also taught me a lot about getting the story and getting it right, building on the mentoring I’d received from another Eastern NC legendary newsman, Glenn Hargett who was the news director at a little radio station in my home town. Later in my television career, a different news director told me the problem with me was that I was a “big J journalist” — someone for whom Journalism came with a capital letter. Yep, I was a big J journalist, thanks to Glenn Hargett, Roy Hardee and other seasoned news professionals.

And according to Roy, I was a “fine-lookin’ blonde” who was smart enough and talented enough to be on the news. That was one tip he didn’t forget to tell me.

Now you may be asking yourself — what does this have to do with social media? Well, I first learned of Roy Hardee’s death on Facebook. Stewart Pittman shared his memories on his blog.  A Google search brought me more links. As I follow the comments, I’ve been finding old colleagues who are posting on blogs or news websites, all sharing their favorite memories of Roy Hardee. The lives he touched are spread out, but we’re all reconnecting through a medium and a memory.

But a favorite aggregator source of mine just took it one better. If you’ve never heard of Alltop, it’s a place that aggregates blogs and RSS feeds under topics. I bookmarked Alltop PR, for example and even had a great shortcut on my desktop where I could scan dozens of blogs and other news about my industry.

Now there’s My Alltop. You can see mine at www.alltop.com/stephskordas. And that’s just one of the things that makes this service so timely. You can share your link with others. Alltop started the ball rolling by asking some of the well-known social media folks out there to create their My Alltop and share it. You can find your favorite guru and check out blogs and sources you might never have encountered otherwise.

As a former journalist, I find myself haunting news sites on the web the way I used to stand over the UPI and AP machines. (Oops, just dated myself!) We used to get the news by teletype, printed at certain times of the day. And if you missed a feed, you’d have to call the local AP office and ask for a refeed or just fill in your newscast with some other roundup. We called it “the wire” — as in “Did you check the wire for the state roundup?” Later, we got the wires via computer in the newsroom. And when I left the newsroom, I called the Internet, the wires, for quite some time. Fully recovered now though.

So, how do you like to get your news? In a paper, delivered in the morning? On TV scattered throughout the day? Or on the internet — where you search it out?

But I think it’s because Katie Couric (grimace. Sorry, can’t stand her.) is failing spectacularly at anchoring the CBS evening news. I have many opinions why it’s not working, but I’ll stick with she’s too used to mornings and evening news is entirely different. Take it from me who worked 19 years in broadcast news.

You see, if Katie had better ratings, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. She’s better! The network is making money! But for them to force him out one year before his big anniversary of taking over the anchor chair for someone who’s ratings are tanking worse than his, then obviously it was a conspiracy and he should be compensated for the way he was treated.

The way he was treated? I always heard that Dan ran the ship at CBS and if Dan didn’t like you, you might as well turn in your microphone and hairspray and head back to a Top 50 market, or better yet, try for a cable network.

I don’t have anything against Dan. Despite working for various CBS affiliates where I sort of HAD to watch the CBS evening news, he never bothered me. Except on election night. I really rather preferred Peter Jennings, truth be told, after working for an ABC affiliate, but I grew up watching Tom Brokaw and really liked him too. So pretty much, I could watch any of them, but would rank them Peter, Tom and Dan if I had to.

While the Bush story debacle “ruined” Dan’s legacy of reporting and doing the tough stories and being the anchor who left the desk to report live from the field, I hardly think a $70 million dollar lawsuit will

A) Solve anything
B) Make Dan feel any better about being forced to resign

What if CBS took that $70 million and spread it around the smallest 50 markets, where their gear is held together by duct tape, where the fledgling reporters are buying their on-air clothes at Target and sharing tiny little apartments with multiple roommates because they’re making what’s basically minimum wage, where there’s no one to teach you how to write to video or how to handle a tough situation with the cops who don’t want you to shoot the crime scene? Those kids are straight out of school and there’s no one showing them the ropes.

Which is too bad because the larger markets are desperate for reporters and producers and throwing barely capable men and women in over their heads into a news cycle that’s 24 hours, with a deadline every 5 minutes, where there’s no time to THINK about the right thing, you just have to KNOW it, but oh yeah, there’s no one TRAINED here, so there are mistakes everywhere and stories that shouldn’t air … oops, just like yours, Dan. Stories that aren’t researched by people without enough experience.

Dan, now THAT would be a legacy.