Bob Stepno is a former journalist for the Hartford Courant and is now a professor at Radford University in Virginia.
He's practically one the first people ever on the internet and is a computer geek from way back (a compliment!)
OTR BUFFET: Could you tell me a little about your background in journalism and about your earliest memories of old-time radio?
Bob Stepno - I was more a "first TV-generation" kid in the fifties, but I do
remember still enjoying The Shadow and Johnny Dollar when I was in
junior high, c. 1960.
My even earlier radio memories are of my grandmother's soap operas on
the kitchen radio, before I was old enough for school. I only remember
the names -- Helen Trent, Guiding Light, Love of Life. I had a 45 rpm
record of The Lone Ranger's "How he found Silver" episode, which I
played over and over, driving my parents crazy.
In high school, I became a shortwave listener and collected QSL cards.
While taking high school Spanish, I translated Radio Madrid program
guide articles to run in my high school Spanish club newspaper -- my
first byline!
At UConn I wrote for school newspapers and did some newspaper-history
research the old-fashioned way: microfilm archives and big dusty
volumes of bound papers. After graduation, I went to work for The
Hartford Courant ("the nation's oldest continuously published
newspaper") as a copy editor, bureau reporter, bureau chief, education
editor and feature writer, in about that order. Eleven years went by
fast. When the L.A. Times bought The Courant, I took my stock in the
company and left for grad school. I wound up with a master's in
anthropology and ethnomusicology, and the computer I'd bought to write
my thesis. It led to a job with a software company, more graduate
courses, another thesis (about hypertext -- in 1988) and a couple of
magazine-writing gigs before I went for a Ph.D. at UNC Chapel Hill.
Back to radio: Through the '70s and '80s, one of my local radio
stations was WTIC, home of Dick Bertel's Golden Age of Radio programs.
In the 1980s, another local station rebroadcast The Shadow and other
old-time programs after midnight. While in grad school, I bought a
Zenith radio/cassette recorder that had a built-in clock timer so that
I could time-shift those already time-shifted programs.
(Unfortunately, I recycled the tapes -- I was a "listener," not a
"collector.")
OTR BUFFET: Tell me about your various websites?
Bob Stepno - There are too many of them, mostly "demos" of different software
systems. :-) My "hub" is http://stepno.com and it will fill in the
gaps for anyone who really wants to know. At UNC, I took one of the
first courses about the Web and worked for one of the first Web
newspapers NandO.net.
In my first teaching job (at Emerson College in 1999), I taught
journalism and Web production with raw HTML, but also started using
Radio Userland, Manila and Blogger, and got to be part of a blogging
discussion group, which got me yet another blog address in August
2003, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/stepno/
Answering this question made me so nostalgic that I logged in at the
Harvard site for the first time in a year to write some "memory lane"
stuff about being on hand for the dawn of podcasting at Harvard. Short
version: Having witnessed that early podcast buzz, I started listening
to a lot of podcasts, including old time radio podcasts like Jim
Widner's Radio Detective Story Hour (http://www.otr.com/blog/), which
included some of those detective-reporters you mentioned.
Having been a reporter around the time of "All the President's Men"
and "Lou Grant," I had always been fascinated by "newspaper movies" --
but the idea that radio had fictional newspaper reporters too was news
to me. The "Freedom of the Press is a flaming sword..." speech at the
start of "Big Town" was especially impressive -- even if the series
was more crime/detective than newspaper-reporting.
When I found myself teaching in a small town without a lot of big
newspapers or Web news sites to visit and interview people for the
kind of research I'd done in my dissertation (finished in 2003), I
decided to see what I could do with a "Image of the Journalist in
Popular Culture -- Radio Dramatic Series" theme. (For research on the
image of journalists in pop culture in general, see Joe Saltzman's
project http://ijpc.org at USC's Annenberg School.)
With luck, my http://jheroes.com blog will evolve into a series of
articles and maybe a book. I'm using the blog posts to think about
individual episodes and a menu of "Pages" to gradually write longer
essays on whole series or topics. I password protect the "Page" items
until they're fairly respectable, or when I'm using them for class
discussions.
I mostly use Internet Archive/OTRR collections of MP3 files to give
readers examples of the shows I'm talking about. I wish I could be
Randy Riddle and track down original, long-unheard transcription
discs, but I see my role more one of listening to the shows and trying
to figure out what those fictional or dramatized journalists were
/doing/ there -- being good role models for future journalists?
Giving audiences false impressions of journalists as crime-fighters?
Helping kids who wanted to be Superman settle for being Clark Kent? Or
just helping mild-mannered script writers tell interesting stories?
OTR BUFFET: Out of all the old-time radio that feature journalists, which one do you feel has the most authenticity and which one is the most ridiculous? Also, do you have a favorite among this "genre?"
Bob Stepno - There are so many that I can't pick one! How about six, each for a
slightly different reason? "Night Beat," "Frontier Gentleman," "Rogers
of the Gazette," "Soldiers of the Press," "Superman" and "The Green
Hornet."
On the "ridiculous" end, I'd put "Bright Star."
I also don't confine myself to whole series -- DuPont Cavalcade and
all of the Hollywood anthologies (Lux, Theater Guild, Screen Guild,
etc.) -- included plenty of stories about newspaper or magazine
journalists. Most of the old "newspaper movies" are there, transformed
to fit the half-hour or hour formats, and some of Cavalcade's
historical profiles are great fun.
OTR BUFFET: Speaking of genre, there seems to be an element in almost all of the newspaper shows that seems to turn them into sleuths? If these aren't deemed detective show, what exactly should we call them?
Bob Stepno - In real-life, reporters can be sleuths part of the time. But there are
plenty of stories where "detecting" or "solving a mystery" isn't
really the point. "Night Beat," "Frontier Gentleman" and "Rogers of
the Gazette" fit those categories. The best episodes are about
capturing the drama of someone's life. The best journalists are
observers, witnesses, interpreters and explainers. Having such a
"story teller" as a main or secondary character certainly gives a
screenplay or script-writer something to work with! The fact that a
reporter is "an outsider" also gives the audience a natural point of
view. And sometimes, you can't be sure whether that "outsider" is the
good guy or not.
OTR BUFFET: I've always felt that Edward G. Robinson's portrayal of editor Steve Wilson (most specifically in the late 1930's as opposed to his portrayal in the early 1940's) on Big Town had an incredible power behind it and is very reminisicent of some power-packed, fast-moving Warner Brothers films of the same era (I believe he even played an editor in one film, much like Steve Wilson.) What is your opinion of those late 1930's episodes I refer to?
Bob Stepno - You're right on the mark. Robinson starred in "Five Star Final," about
a guilt-ridden tabloid editor. He lets his circulation-mad publisher
push him to do a story that ultimately leads to a double-suicide and
brings a third victim into his office gunning for him. (That's what he
gets for sending out Boris Karloff as reporter!)
"Big Town" begins with a similar editor doing an expose that hurts a
woman (Pittsburgh Lil), who actually does shoot Wilson. He writes his
own obituary, but survives -- and reforms. I wish more episodes were
available to show his whole transition from scandal-monger to
public-servant, which is pretty solidly established by the half-dozen
Robinson episodes I've heard. He literally carries the canaries into a
coal mine in one episode. The "safe driving" episodes are a good hint
that stories about "public service journalism" might not be as
dramatic as life-and-death crime shows. That kind of preachiness was
probably hard to sell to sponsors.
I get the impression that during the Robinson-to-Pawley transition the
producers decided that "crime drama" with the words "fatal" or "death"
in almost every title was the way to go. Here's an interesting
research question: How many of those Pawley-years episodes mention a
newspaper story getting written?
Incidentally, "Five Star Final" was based on a play by a former
newspaperman who was (briefly) editor of the New York Evening Graphic,
which I've done research on off-and-on for years.
(http://stepno.com/unc/graphic)
OTR BUFFET: I've always felt that one of the most underrated shows was "Soldiers of the Press", which takes real stories from the journalists from WWII and made a 15 minute drama out of each one. What are your feeling about the show?
Bob Stepno - I wish someone from United Press had written a history of that
program. I've looked at UPI staff autobiographies and searched online
sites, but haven't found much. I'd love to spend a month or three
shoveling through scripts, business files and correspondence about the
show. If anyone can point me to that kind of material, please do.
I've listened to about 40 episodes and some of them are excellent.
I've tracked down stories by some of the reporters, as well as
biographical information about them, but I haven't posted any of my
notes yet. Judging by the sound effects and music, I get the feeling
the budget for the series slipped over the years, but some episodes
are excellent.
Some of the OTR pages online are under the misconception that the
voices heard are the actual reporters, but those were clearly radio
actors stateside re-creating episodes from the lives of the
wire-service reporters overseas. I talked to J.David Goldin about the
show a couple of years ago and he rattled off specific actors' voices
that he recognized. Wish I had his ear!
NPR interviewed Walter Cronkite, who mentioned how strange it was to
hear an actor saying "This is Walter Cronkite..." in the Soldiers of
the Press episodes about him. He had been a "print" reporter for
United Press; the broadcasting came later.
The syndicate, which became UPI, was in serious competition with the
Associated Press, and I assume having a dramatic series about U.P.
reporters was partly an attempt to promote the wire service to new
customers -- newspaper publishers and radio stations, as both UPI and
AP got into the radio-news business. (I remember reading about AP
having a series dramatizing reporters' stories, but I haven't heard
it.)
Did stations pay for "Soldiers of the Press" or was it entirely
"sponsored" by United Press? Did it have any government support as a
wartime public service? Did U.P. bundle it with news services? I have
more questions than answers about the series. I hope to get back to it
this summer... or after I retire.
Similarly, I'm fascinated by the dramatized biographies of reporters,
editors or publishers on "The Big Story," "Cavalcade of America,"
"Captains of Industry" and series like that. Even "You Are There" and
"March of Time" fit this "dramatizing the news" model. I've gone
looking for the actual newspaper stories behind some of the "March of
Time" episodes after I noticed that Time magazine didn't just use the
series to promote its own reporters.
OTR BUFFET: One thing you don't seem to cover on your web site that deals with old-time radio are the newscasters of the Golden Age. How important do you think they were in molding the journalists of the time since then? Do the modern day news journalists even know who these pioneers were?
Bob Stepno - Yes, that was a conscious decision. My "project" has to do mostly with
the dramatic portrayals of newspaper, magazine and wire-service
journalists. I started with fictional ones, then decided to add
"dramatized" lives of non-fictional journalists.
I'm not going to get into the actual working radio journalists like
Kaltenborn, Murrow, Shirer, Sevareid and everyone between. (Well, I do
mention Douglas Edwards when I get to "Wendy Warren" -- strange
concept, combining a real newscast with the intro to a soap opera
about a fictional reporter.)
I figured the real-life broadcast journalists already had a secure
place in the "media history" textbooks and research journals. Also,
many of them went on to write books, do TV, and anchor their
reputations as journalists in forms than their radio broadcasts.
However, the fact that radio told the big stories *first* influenced
many print journalists to think more about telling the "why?" stories
or going into more depth -- at least to be aware of the differences.
And maybe radio inspired newspapers to take a more personal approach
to reporting; I don't know for sure. Did the practice of running
photos next to columnists' opinion pieces start because radio had made
news reporting more personal? Or was it just because of improvements
in photography and layout? And of course radio also beat print on
capturing the immediacy of news. Newspapers moved away from the
many-editions-per-day "Extra!" model that they'd followed for decades.
(Interesting that the Web and Twitter are putting us all in the
"Extra!" business again.) Some also went into more visual elements --
photos and charts -- and more "depth" or "interpretive" reporting, to
give you something radio couldn't do.
As for remembering the pioneers... My guess is that the folks at NPR
have their antennas out for the history of their own profession the
way I do for newspaper history. For instance, long-time NPR host Bob
Edwards wrote book a few years ago about Murrow and the history radio
news.
I suspect that most TV news folks only look back as far as Murrow and
Cronkite, but I could be wrong. Maybe some of them trace their roots
to "March of Time" newsreels and radio news.
OTR BUFFET: When I first discovered old-time radio in the mid-1970's, I found that Nightbeat was my favorite show. I found it had a feel about it that the other shows didn't have. I've kind of lost my love for the show these days. Tell me what you like or don't like about Randy Stone and Nightbeat?
Bob Stepno - It's definitely a different kind of series, and some episodes are
better than others. It reminds me of the TV shows "The Fugitive" or
"Route 66" -- the same central character thrown into "someone else's
life" each week. In some episodes Stone's process of "getting
material for the column" is more realistic than others. Sometimes the
"noir" writing style sounds dated or cute. Sometimes the coincidences
are too contrived, or the characters a bit schmaltzy for my taste.
In a few, he's just a stand-in for a "man of action" detective, but
that doesn't happen to him regularly -- he's not "Crime Photographer"
or Steve Wilson.
The episodes I like best are the one where he's more realistically a
reporter looking for "human interest" stories and getting lucky at
least once in a while (I wonder if that's why "Lucky Stone" was his
name for one episode?) On the best episodes, I really can imagine him
banging out his copy before deadline, then heading over to Billy
Goat's for a beer with Mike Royko.
Some endings are darker than others, and some "morals" at the end fall
a little flat. I've gotten a little distracted playing a game of "Who
is Bill Conrad going to be this week?" He's Stone's editor in a
Christmas episode, a dying reporter in another, a punch-drunk boxer in
another, an old gangster in one -- and probably more. As I write about
these, I'll mostly focus on the ones with more "journalism process"
involved.
I'm especially intrigued by a couple of episodes in which real
reporters are either guests at the end of the show or are mentioned in
tribute. Did journalism students or working reporters in the 1950s
tune-in to "Night Beat" the way my generation tuned in to "Lou Grant"
looking for role models -- or something to criticize? I suspect so.
But I haven't seen anyone mention it in a memoir the way they do Lois
Lane and Clark Kent.
OTR BUFFET: What show that features reporters should we be listening to that we probably aren't and why?
Bob Stepno - I wish there were more episodes of "Shorty Bell," "San Francisco
Final," "Deadline Mystery," "Jane Endicott" and "Douglas of the World"
to listen to.
If I had more time, health and research-travel money, I'd go to some
university archives that have the personal papers of script writers on
some of these programs. I've found a couple of them, but for some
reason none are in my neighborhood in rural western Virginia, alas.
Since your readers are already OTR fans, what I really wish they'd do
is keep their ears open for reporters and editors in /other/ kinds of
series -- and drop me a line!
For instance, I've already found the Lone Ranger rescuing Horace
Greeley in one episode. The Cisco Kid helped some folk defrauded by a
printer's fake land-deal newspaper. A friendly local editor took an
interest in Little Orphan Annie (was his headline "Orphan Gets
Valuable Birthstone Ring as Gift," and did he include Ovaltine
coupons?).
A student newspaper makes waves in "Halls of Ivy." Matt Dillon is
faced with a woman journalist, a scandal-seeking male reporter and a
visiting photographer in various Gunsmoke episodes. Indian-war
correspondents come to cover the frontier in other Western series.
"Vic & Sade" entertain themselves by riffing off the local news in
their paper. "Lum & Abner" get their names in the paper, if not
spelled right. "Our Miss Brooks," "Blondie" and some other
family-comedy series had school-newspaper or similar episodes. And
there are episodes of Suspense and other anthology series where the
reporter is hero, victim or villain. (Trent's Last Case, The Hands of
Mr. Ottermole, etc.)
And I've barely started on the soaps with some newspaper themes or
subplots. Randy Riddle turned me on to the newspaper as anti-Roosevelt
propaganda tool in "American Family Robinson," and I have episodes of
Front Page Farrell, Betty & Bob (I'm podcasting it on Wednesdays), Big
Sister, Mary Foster and Wendy Warren -- even corresponded with a
real-life journalist by that name who had never heard of her esteemed
predecessor.
But there are huge gaps in my listening. For example, I've seen
posters for a Henry Aldritch movie in which he's a school paper
editor, but I don't know if that was a theme in the radio series.
But you asked what to listen to. If anyone has missed it, I'd
recommend "Frontier Gentleman" for some fun stories, historical
connections and good writing and production. Andy Griffith fans
shouldn't miss "Rogers of the Gazette." Other folks might also be
amused to give Superman or The Green Hornet another listen, paying
attention to just how much "reporting" the reporters do, how the
"public service journalism" sometimes shapes the plot -- and whether
the reporters and editors make ethical decisions or fake stuff.
In the "dramatized non-fiction" zone, I also want to spend more time
with "The Big Story," especially because its tobacco sponsorship means
that plenty of scripts are in the tobacco-papers archive at UCLA.
OTR BUFFET: Thank you, Professor, so much for your time in doing this with me!
Bob Stepno - You're welcome. Writing this has reminded me of a lot of things I've
wanted to get to.... "Eventually" seems to be stretching out before me
like a promised land...
©Jimbo 2010/2011
