Veteran Black newscaster Dennis Richmond retiring tonight...

[trane_fanatic]

http://www.ktvu.com/news/16335377/detail.html

Bay Area Says Farewell To A Broadcasting Legend

POSTED: 10:31 pm PDT May 19, 2008

UPDATED: 8:05 am PDT May 21, 2008

OAKLAND, Calif. -- While Dennis Richmond's extraordinary 40-year career at KTVU has been the focus of several reports during the past week, one story that hasn't been told looks at the many obstacles he had to overcome and how his success has inspired others.

It was an era of campus sit-ins at UC Berkeley and civil rights protests on Bay Area streets that sometimes boiled over into violence. It also a time during which those delivering the news each night did not always reflect the look of those caught up in the turmoil.

That would soon change.

In 1969, a young reporter came back to Oakland after a summer in journalism school at Columbia University in New York.

Dennis Richmond was on the cusp of launching a Bay Area career that would span 40 years.

Retired KTVU chief news photographer Bill Moore was the first African-American cameraman hired by a local news station. He reported for his first day work on the same day as Richmond: April 29th, 1968.

"To the black community, he was hope. They could turn on and they could see there was someone who could identify with us. There was someone who was a result of why affirmative action worked," explains Moore.

Their hiring was the result of a landmark federal court decision mandating that television stations reflect their local communities. At the time, Moore says African-American journalists often met with hostility while trying to cover stories.

"Once, Dennis and I approached San Quentin in a news car with markings on it. We both had big hair back then. And as they asked us for credentials they pointed weapons at us. That is what it was like in the early days," remembers Moore.

UC Berkeley sociology professor and former Black Panther Harry Edwards remembers that Richmond stood out so much there were suspicions that he was working for the FBI.

"I remember the first time that I saw him out covering a Black Panther party rally. He was truly a phenomena at that time, because there weren't a lot of black reporters out there. So he stood out in the crowd," recalls Edwards.

Edwards says Richmond worked hard to earn respect.

"I think that everybody involved in the movement at that time came to understand him as a journalist, and came to trust in the authenticity and integrity of what he would put on the air," says Edwards,

Belva Davis became the first female African-American television reporter in the western United States in 1966. She is also married to Bill Moore. She says she pushed Richmond into applying for the journalism program at Columbia University. She says that training set him on his path to becoming a presence at the anchor desk for the Channel Two News.

"I think it made some people more comfortable in dealing across racial lines because they could see here was a no-nonsense straight shooter," says Davis. "Good looking too!"

Davis says Richmond's legacy lies in his no-frills delivery.

"He sticks with giving me the facts of the story. And in a way that is without emotion that would make me sway my opinion one way or another. And I don't think that they are, as they say, turning them out like Dennis anymore," says Davis.

Which isn't to say that they aren't trying.

Up-and-coming broadcast journalists at San Francisco State University are taking some of their cues from veteran journalists like Dennis.

"He's a bit of a role model. I would say so, because he's been around. He's been through the changes of technology," says SFSU journalism student Sundeep Dosanjh.

Bay Area Black Journalists Association member Bob Butler agrees, "I think when they see Dennis, he's always been there. They take it for granted. [They think] 'Yeah, I can do what he did' without realizing what he had to go through to get there."

Even non-journalists say the news anchor has affected their professional development. Ansara Johnson says Richmond inspired him to become a spokesman for the IRS.

"There weren’t that many African Americans on television period, so it was really a belssing to see him out there doing that and to do it for so long," says Johnson.

It's a legacy that those who know Dennis Richmond say will go on long after the lights go down on his final broadcast.

[Jazzmoose]

Many's the night I spent with Dennis Richmond and Elaine Corral, at least for an hour...