I was a reporter for WRKL during the summer of 1972
Posted Dec 24, 2007 4:08 AM
I was a reporter for WRKL during the summer of 1972. I was 19 years old. I worked at night covering local stories such as Board of Ed meetings, neighborhood disputes, Sewer District Meetings - really exciting stuff. My best beat was the Rockland County Legislature. I knew Joe Balsamo who was a key member of the Legislature. He would always give me great soundbites after the meetings.
After the meetings, I would go back to the WRKL newsroom, do my intro and outro, and leave my taped (on cassette) interview. Occassionally I would phone in the story. There was a way I could record the intro, record the outro, and then play the taped interview into the phone and it was recorded at the station.
There was a night news manager who would do the editing and put the story together. I forgot his name, but he was a young guy, probably in his early twenties.
Sometimes I would fill in for him and put the stories together as the other reporters called the stories in. I would get everything ready for the morning newscast.
I loved waking up in the morning and hearing myself on the radio. "Reporting from New City, this is Joe Rosenberg for WRKL News," or something like that.
I think Jack McIntyre was the station manager and/or the news director. His mother had been one of my teachers at Suffern High School.
Once the news work was done, I would hang out at the station until 4am, or right before the morning staff would come in. WRKL had a large record library, and I would spend hours listening to rock and roll records that were in the library, but were never played on the air.
I would also do my own production work in a back studio. I had attended the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach in 1972 as a reporter (I would call in interviews with local Rockland County delegates every night. I spent countless hours putting a collage together of all my interviews, soundbites, celebrity and politician interviews. Unfortunately, I recorded over the collage accidentally, and it was all lost.