One For All

The look through my steel-blue eyes is the look of as-of-yet unfinished dreams and aspirations.

Something is missing.

My career in journalism has been rather long, starting in 1995 and - aside from a few years of what I call “civilian life” - rolling on ever since. As I’ve jokingly said before, some would call it a miracle I’ve lasted this long.

Thing is, it’s seemed like my entire professional journey through this line of work has been done with an increasingly-weighted heart.

I remember when my father asked his high-school-aged son what I planned to major in at college.

“Broadcast journalism,” I told my father.

Now, I won’t share what his actual line was in response. It was something that only a loving and good-humored father would tell his son. All I’ll say is he and my mother were very supportive of my choice to go down this path.

My father, teaching me how to tie a necktie. Looks like I needed to still brush my scraggly-looking hair.

Soon after starting at UW-Eau Claire, I joined the news team at the campus television station. Sure, I did a few things on-air in my first year there and I vaguely remember my father seeing a couple clips of his son on TV. But, this was as a green kid doing silly things - a far cry from being an actual television news reporter.

My father died in August of 1994, when I was just 19 years old. A rough time for a new adult to lose a parent, but also, he never got to physically see what his son could become.

In the wake of my father’s death, it then fell to his father to act as sort of a “surrogate dad” during his grandson’s adult years. He was the one in 1995 who found a classified ad, asking for help covering sports for the local daily newspaper. I put in and spent two years there, learning the business during the Stone Age of modern communication.

Grandpa Roger loved seeing my name in the byline. He was just tickled over it and then saw me take in my first true behind-the-scenes roles in local TV news. When I came back from Augusta, Georgia in 2000, I lived at my grandparents’ home for a couple months while I looked for a job in journalism. While my Grandpa Roger loved me, he didn’t mince words.

“You gotta get a job. Otherwise, you’re going to have to go down and be a cashier. Something. You gotta have a job,” he’d say.

With my Grandpa Roger, sometime in the mid-1990s.

When I landed on my feet in Stevens Point, Wisconsin that fall of 2000, it started the second act in my journalism career. For the next seven years, I rose up the ranks and really started to hone in on my writing.

By the beginning of 2007, I was the sports editor for the Oshkosh Northwestern and stumbled on a neat idea - producing video highlights for our website. This was 14 years ago, after all, and hardly any newspapers were creating the kind of video production that I was doing. Think of what I did like using a jet airplane at the same time Charles Lindburgh flew the “Spirit of St. Louis”.

Along with my regular Sunday columns, my grandfather got to see a little more of what I could do.

It was soon after I told him about an opportunity out west when he suddenly became ill. By “suddenly”, I mean my aunt called one day to tell me “They’re keeping him alive tonight for us to all come and say goodbye.” 

I got to Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire just in time to see my grandfather alive one final time. Looking into my grandpa’s eyes, we each had tears when I told him “Say hi to Jeff for me,” referring to my father.

“I will,” he said.

Those were his last words to me. My grandfather died just two weeks before I was flown out to interview for KUSA-TV in Denver. He never got to see his grandson on the anchor desk, never saw his grandson reporting live for the No. 1 station in a top-20 market, never saw me hit some of the highest marks in my career.

The next several years saw me go from a personal zenith to an emotional nadir so fast, then start the resurgence for my third act.

Standing next to my grandmother - I called her Nana. Even at a young age, I was already taller than she was.

When the chance came in 2015 to come back to my hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, I had many reasons for accepting the position with WEAU-TV. One of them was for so many people back home to now see what I can do and what kind of a journalist I had become.

Among those new viewers would be my last surviving grandparent - my dad’s mom, or Nana, as I called her. By this point, she had moved to an assisted living facility and many days were spent watching the television. Now, she’d get the chance to see her grandson on the local news. It’s said that she’d organize groups at the facility to watch me as I reported or anchored.

It was in 2017 when she started to get ill and had to be admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chippewa Falls. We’d go see her and thankfully there was a TV in her room … which did lead once to a tough decision.

One afternoon, I visited her and said that I’d be filling in to anchor our 4 p.m. newscast.

“Now, that’s a bit of a problem,” she told me, with a warm smile. “See, I like ‘Dr. Phil’ on the other station at 4 and it’s hard to miss it.”

She did watch her grandson on the anchor desk that night, but I did have a warm story to tell my colleagues when I got into the newsroom.

Within days, however, her condition worsened and she died Oct. 16, 2017. My Nana was really the last person close in my life who hadn’t truly seen what I could do. My hope is wherever she went, she’d tell her husband and oldest son “You’d love seeing what Jesse is doing.”

Hanging out with my mother, the one who’s seen my full journey through journalism - so far, at least.

The one person who has seen my full journey has been my mother. When I was at the college TV station, she’d sometimes order pizzas and snacks for the team during our annual all-weekend movie-marathon prize giveaways. When I was coming back to the Midwest from the Deep South, she was the first one who saw her then-really-skinny kid galloping down the airport walkway to give her a hug. When I was on-the-air in Denver or Cheyenne, Wyoming, or Eau Claire, Wisconsin, she’s had the chance to tune her son in and watch me at work.

But now, I’m left a bit empty.

Since the fall of 2019, I’ve felt like I’ve accomplished almost all I really set out for with my hometown station - reporter, producer, fill-in anchor, and de facto in-house curmudgeon, longing for the golden days of broadcasting. At times, I’ve tried to offer an anecdote or tidbit to the newly-minted next generation of reporters. My hope is this new crop of talent can take that and use it to their advantage wherever they land.

Now, I said “almost”. This is where my reporting in June of 2020 from the intersection where George Floyd died comes into play. Not knowing at the onset how the story would be told, I still knew going in this could be powerful. So, I threw myself into reporting on this moment in time and it was an honor when it was awarded 1st-place by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association.

So, herein lies the conundrum.

Much of my career has been - directly or indirectly - for the approval of someone else. Yes, we have our audience to worry about, in terms of ratings or circulation. Without an audience, I’m just talking to myself - and I do enough of that already. Yet, I’ve never allowed myself to strive for the ultimate prize that I want. Either, it’s been presented to me and I’ve just taken it or I’ve done it to impress someone else.

It’s like I’ve had to try and prove to so many people that I can succeed in this profession. It’s to a father who never saw his son even get off the ground. It’s to a grandfather who never witnessed his grandson occupy a highly-coveted seat at the anchor desk. It’s for a grandmother who could see for herself what the grandson had become.

They’re all gone and I’m now wondering who I’m on this journey for.

Back in the producer’s chair. This was actually on May 13, 2021 - the first night we were allowed to go back to being maskless in the control room.

It’s been said so often “Well, you have to do it because you want it.” I’ve usually answered that with “Yes, but …” and then, the qualifiers get tacked on. It’s never been “Yes, dammit! I want that!” I partly envy those who’ve been that gung-ho in themselves to be in it for themselves.

I’m reminded of the Latin expression: “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno”. The translation means “One for all, all for one.” and has become the unofficial motto of Switzerland. Many of you know a version of it used in the Alexandre Dumas novel “The Three Musketeers”.

Well, that could also be a journalist’s credo. As I said, we all need to be in this business, in some way, for all of our viewers and readers. Yet, I’m wrestling with the push to have a utopian platform to allow my 20-plus years in journalism to shine. My mother and I have had discussions about this point and she supports my current push back to the major arena. She’s seen it all and is hoping for her son to hit the jackpot.

While my agonies of defeat have been piling up this year, there’s confidence that there will be one true thrill of victory coming up. When that happens, the euphoria will be intense, the passion will be reborn, and the excitement will have only just begun.

Because, it’s now all for this one individual. When the prize is attained, it’ll then be this one intrepid journalist showing you all how it can be done.

Tally-ho!