There’s a test I love conducting with young kids looking to get into my line of work.

It’s usually administered when I have been asked to speak to a class at a high school or college. I’ll get up after being welcomed and then introduce myself. At the dais, I have a yellow legal notepad.

“Before we get into what I have to say to you,” I say. “I want you all to tell me your name and give me the reason why you want to get into journalism.”

Let the examination begin.

Each student will get up and share who they are, along with the aspirations for wanting to be in journalism - usually, on the broadcast side.

Once the last student finishes, I thank them all for doing that. 

Then, I explain the notepad - marked with a line drawn down the middle from top to bottom, with a “Y” over one column and an “N” over the other.

“See, when you were giving your reasons for wanting to get into my line of work, I was marking it down to if I thought your reason was a good one,” I tell the students.

Some of the young smiles begin to fade away. The rest of them are blown to smithereens with my next line.

“I must say a third of you gave what I feel are bad reasons.”

Now you see the reason I would be brought in to address a class. Daily journalism is about hard work, a strong commitment to your craft, using all of your mental and creative juices to tell a story - and then doing it all over again the next day.

Those bad reasons are almost centered around fame, glory, and money. These are the instant negative checks on my notepad. I have seen many young people come into this profession thinking they will instantly possess great adulation. More than that, I’ve even seen newbies come in with the attitude that they “deserve” it. Oh, that’s a word which cuts into my patience. In broadcast journalism, as it is in life, we don’t deserve anything. It all has to be earned.

So, when I get into the meat of my address, I tell these students that you’re going to get familiar real quick with places like Dothan, Alabama, Pocatello, Idaho, and Beaumont, Texas. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a market like Eau Claire, Wisconsin to begin what I call your “true master’s work” after college.

I suppose it’s just part of my upbringing that I hold such a strong belief. However, I still believe that hard work will eventually pay off. Both my parents gave much time in the 1980s to operating a taxidermy studio as the “family business”, while my dad also helped build tires at the local Uniroyal factory. That job was “for the good insurance”.

Yet, when there would be a layoff, I could remember the blocks of government cheese and, at times, heating our upstairs living area by turning on the oven while propping its door open. Even through this, they never gave up. They kept at it and worked to give their only child the best shot he can have.

That son continues, all these years later, to work his you-know-what off to give myself the best shot I can have. Despite all the hard work, there have been few accolades. This is not meant to say I’ve been ignored and have been of no consequence. Get to know me for five minutes and you’ll see how I can’t be ignored.

What I mean is I have had many great moments in my 20-plus years in daily journalism - print and broadcast, on-air and behind-the-scenes. There have been some internal victories in my career, but never the tangible award. Never that piece of hardware which says “Yup, you’re at that level.”

I’ve long had a disdain for awards in my profession, probably due to being constantly shut out. I think it started back in 2001. I had a boss at the time, who’s now out in New York City, that allowed me to create a 5-part series on NFL training camps in Wisconsin. The Jacksonville Jaguars held their first-ever camp in 1995 in Stevens Point - the city I was in at the time. The New Orleans Saints operated training camp in La Crosse from 1988 to 1999. The year of my series was also the final season the Chicago Bears would hold training camp in Platteville, and the in-state camps for the Kansas City Chiefs (River Falls) and the Green Bay Packers were still running.

For this “Death of the Cheese League” series, I talked with fans, broadcasters, beat writers, coaches, players, and front office personnel. One writer for the Kansas City Star said he’d keep my articles in his files, as he said it contained so much good background information. This was before Wikipedia, after all.

The project took close to three months to complete and, once it made the front pages, I thought this was surely an award-winning series. Surely, this will hit for something.

Nope. Not one sniff of anything … and boy, was I … well, let’s call it “perturbed”.

Ever since, there has been that feeling of what went behind awards. You’re basing your perceived excellence on the thought that an anonymous collective will think the same way you do. Hell, it’s hard enough for me to have a collective of known people think the same way I do. Sometimes, it feels like you have better odds of plopping $20 on the red “9” at the roulette table and having it hit - which actually happened to me once on my only trip to Las Vegas.

So, for the next 20 years, I would submit things for awards and each time, it wouldn’t win. Now, when I say “win”, I mean come in 1st place. There was the time in 2015 I took 2nd place as best sportscaster in Wyoming, but that was in a two-horse race amongst two stations … and my then-colleague came in 1st.

Awards are something one of my previous ports-of-call knows about all too well. In an earlier TBD column, I talked about the times I’d stand in the newsroom at KUSA-TV in Denver and murmur to myself “How in the hell did I get here?” This is a place which has Emmys, Murrows, and Peabodys coming out of the walls - almost literally. Each year I was there, it wasn’t a question of “Would they win an Emmy?” or “Will they win the most Emmys?” No. Each year, the question to ask was “Would KUSA win more regional Emmy awards than the other stations in the Denver market - combined?!?!” The answer was “Yes.”

ADDENDUM: Since I wrote this, I looked up the most-recent list from the Heartland regional Emmy Awards. KUSA did win the most Emmys overall, with 24 awards. However, KDVR (Fox) was right behind with 21. KMGH (ABC) took home 18 Emmys and KCNC (CBS) brought home 3 awards.

Talk about intimidation, coming in as a lowly sports editor for a small-circulation daily newspaper. Yet, through my time there, I was able to carve out a niche which was unique and became rather successful at the same time. We’d all get overnight Neilsen ratings, and each Monday, we’d see how our weekend morning show scored. These numbers would be broken down to 7½-minute blocks of time. Nearly each Monday I’d look, the result was almost always the same. We’d sign on at 7 a.m. and the numbers would tick up and up. Then, it would hit a peak in the final 7½ minutes before 8 a.m. Then, once 8 hit, the numbers would drop back down ahead of “Meet The Press”. 

Those 7½ minutes where the ratings and shares were at its highest were when I was anchoring the “Prep Rally”. There wasn’t any plaque or trophy which came with that. Just the perceived satisfaction of bringing my small slice of the overall 9NEWS broadcasting pie up to a savory level.

That internal sense of winning has been with me for the past 5½ years at my hometown station - WEAU-TV in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Yes, there was a precedent set coming in as it was the top station in the market. However, since becoming the station’s weeknight 6 and 10 p.m. producer, I’ve tried to hold myself to that same goal of putting up more points than the other team … and, I’m proud to say, this feat is accomplished most nights.

Now, why have I been going off on television ratings? It’s because it shows that these are the true judges I’m trying to impress. Seeing that the majority of the market checks on what we’re doing makes me confident that I’m on the right path and their validation of my work is immensely appreciated.

The wins in the ratings have helped to partly compensate for my never winning any awards - at least, until this past Saturday (May 1st).

This was the first of a four-day break from the office and I was back home for the night. I was monitoring the tweets from the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association and its annual Awards for Excellence. Our station had many finalists in the running and that was wonderful to see. Two of our 18 finalist entries were basically solo submissions of mine - the written piece on my visit to the site of George Floyd’s death (Best Web Story) and my tweets covering a protest march through my city (Best Online Breaking News Coverage). 

Leading up to the event, I was trying my damndest to not say anything about it at the office. I had learned early on to never celebrate something you don’t yet have. It wasn’t until the event was all wrapped up and the governing body posted the full list of winners that I officially knew.

A perfect 2-for-2.

In all, our station scored six 1st-place wins, eight for 2nd-place, and four for 3rd-place. We did a fantastic job and it’s a credit to all of the people there who continue to lay it out on the line each day and each night. There were a couple other wins which I had a hand in and I couldn’t be more proud of the station’s overall success.

Yet, it was when I saw my entries listed as 1st that I just broke down and cried. Finally - FINALLY - I was, at least on this night and in this arena, deemed a winner.

When I was in high school, I was on our forensics team and I did pretty damn well. However, as a junior, I still remember a more-experienced senior telling me “Keep yourself grounded. If you always win, you forget what it’s like to lose.”

So, when I would later fall short of 1st at competitions, thinking I had scored well, there was a sting. However, that just allowed me the chance to pick myself up and come back stronger the next time.

During my long career as a journalist, however, it had almost felt like the reverse - always fall short, and forget what it’s like to win. Now, there’s a taste in my mouth, like sinking your teeth into some wonderful tiramisù. “So, THAT’S what a win tastes like!”

You know, since it came this late in my career, I’ll see these accolades in a brighter light. Golfer Mark O'Meara turned pro in 1980, but it took four more years for him to score his first tour victory, at the Greater Milwaukee Open, and another 14 years to win his first major championship, at the 1998 Masters. 18 years is a long time between starting and securing that first major win.

In my profession, these WBA wins are probably like my version of the GMO. 22 years is a little longer than O’Meara’s four years until his first victory. However, I can still have a shot at the major tournament wins out there. 

This post has been hard for me to write. No, really. As someone once said to me, during a low point in my life and career: “There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Once you know how to walk that line, you’ll go far.” Not saying I’ll ever win an Emmy or Murrow, but it’s nice to know I can check off that elusive moniker of “award-winning journalist.”

Contrary to a popular belief held by plenty of viewers and some within my line of work, this business is not all about the reporter. It’s about the people who trust us and share their stories. Boy, that’s not always easy. Even so, it’s one of the main reasons I dove into this profession. My benchmark is if I hear something and then go “Huh. I didn’t know that.”, I’m safe to say at least 10 people I know will react the same way and each of those people have 10 people they know who don’t know this morsel of fact. Now, you have a news story.

The late, great anchor Peter Jennings said on his final broadcast in 2005: “A journalist who doesn’t value deeply the audience’s loyalty should be in another line of work.” That’s the ultimate prize - our audience’s validation. Whether it's print or broadcast, we would just be empty voices, if it wasn’t for people wanting to listen to what we have to offer. For people to reward you with top ratings or high circulation numbers is deeply valued and I’ll never take that for granted.

You give me this as your reason for getting into journalism, and I’ll always mark that down in the “Yes” column.