TOPEKA, Kan. — A Blog by FOX 4’s John Holt.
As the Topeka Fire Department water flooded the old brick barn high upon a Menninger Campus hill, so too did the memories flood back for me.
You see, that old building was my second home while in college and law school at KU, and for three years thereafter. WIBW-13 News. My start in the world of television. I’d done radio in my hometown of Great Bend and in Lawrence, but this was different. This was TV. I’d found my calling!
I remember the intern gauntlet. A junior at KU, I was among the dozens of college kids who drove to the top of the hill and endured intern interview day. The pipe wielding news director and 6 p.m. anchor at the time, Jim Hollis, put me through the paces. Then it was upstairs to a dark conference room, and an interview with General Manager George Logan, Operations Manager Carlos Fernandez, and Assistant News Director Kent Cornish. Despite my nervous state, I survived the cut and joined the Intern Class of 1980. The rest for me is history and a string of glorious memories.
From anchoring my first newscast on a Saturday at noon (Don’t go long. The preachers who had bought time at 12:15 p.m. would be none too pleased), to my first taste of long-form magazine reporting on the award-winning “File 13.” There was early morning radio to anchor (WIBW also featured AM and FM signals), slides to pull and stack for graphics, wire machines to clear with stories to peg, videotape to edit, and scripts to write on old Selectric typewriters, multiple copies thanks to carbon paper rather than computer printers.
I learned to “one-man band,” cover statehouse politics, wave in parades, and cultivate sources. I learned skills that I draw on even to this day, an age of digital and internet and convergence and “tweeting” and overnight ratings. I learned television news. I knew what I wanted to do, and not even grad school would divert my path.
But mostly, I forged deep and lasting relationships and friendships that endure to this day. We were all learning together, none of us in it for glory or money. We were in it because we loved it and the product we shared with our northeast Kansas viewers night in and night out. There were no consultants or focus groups or metered overnights or high-def. We left each day vowing to come back and do better the next.
Some of us stayed in the business, many moving into the larger Kansas City market or beyond. Others moved on to other successful careers. But we all share those glorious days together on Menninger Hill in an old red brick building that housed our lives and passions.
A fire destroyed the old building. It won’t scorch the great memories and friendships!