Ch-Ch-Changes

Bob Trent was the best news director I ever worked for.

Bruce Miller, WTVR's news director, didn't stay long after I joined the news staff. He'd been news director since the early 1960s. When he first started, the TV news department consisted of him and a photographer. By the time he left for the field of public broadcasting in 1970, the staff had grown to about 20.

For a time, Larry Cooper served as interim news director. But then management made an excellent decision: They hired Bob Trent, a radio news and sports reporter who had been working at WRNL.

Bob turned out to be the best news director I ever worked for. He was an organized administrator. He had cultivated a variety of excellent sources during his years in Richmond. He was determined that our newscasts would beat the competition six ways from Sunday. And he hated -- absolutely loathed -- being behind on a story, any story. He wanted WTVR to be first and fast, and he prized accuracy.

He made a flurry of good decisions when he arrived. He hired a couple of good anchormen, among them a young man from Ohio named Ken Srpan. (Ken's last name was pronounced SIR-pan. The newsroom started an informal "vowel movement" to add a letter to his last name, which I don't think Ken found particularly amusing.) He also brought on board one of the best reporters I ever worked with, Bonnie DeVries. Bonnie was so good she kept us all on our toes. She was also a striking Nordic blonde, which she used to her advantage in the male-dominated world of politics and government. Her intelligence and her ability to home in on the real story behind the razzle and the dazzle made those she covered both trust and fear her.

Bob instilled in all of us a renewed sense of the importance of the news we broadcast and a renewed dedication to being first in the ratings. ("News/90" was first in the ratings when he joined us and was No. 1 by a greater margin when he left.)

I remember one significant point he made in an early staff meeting: "People vote and make decisions about their lives based on what we report." Those words stuck with me for the rest of my career in the news business.

Bob also had a temper. I remember him putting his fist through the newsroom wall when we lost an important story in the film processor. He didn't abandon the story because we lost the film, though. He had the reporter join the anchorman live on the set to tell the story -- something that was far from routine in those days. But Bob believed the story mattered more than any visuals.

Bob taught us well, but the respect for accuracy he instilled in us came back to haunt him a few years later. Bob left WTVR after two years. In 1976 he surfaced publicly again -- this time as a campaign staffer for Democrat Elmo Zumwalt, who was running against incumbent U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr. A career Navy man, Zumwalt was the youngest officer ever to serve as Chief of Naval Operations. After he retired with 32 years in uniform, he launched his campaign against Byrd, who was by then an Independent.

By 1976 I had moved up to news director at WTVR. Bob called me one afternoon with a tip on a story that the Byrd campaign definitely would not have wanted to see broadcast. I forget what the story was, although I do remember that it was nothing scandalous. It was newsworthy, however, so I took notes and assigned a reporter to write it up for the "News/90" anchorman to read.

During our conversation on the phone, I told Bob that I'd have to include the fact that the tip had come from the Zumwalt campaign. He asked me not to do that. But I didn't think I had a choice. What he had taught us about accuracy was important.

I believe Bob knew that I was right in attributing the story to him instead of to an un-named source.

Zumwalt lost his campaign against Byrd. It certainly wasn't because of that one story that Bob had tipped us to. However, the incident did damage our relationship. And I regret that even today.