During my ~30 years in broadcasting I had numerous occasions to recruit and hire reporters. Because our newsrooms were small (3 or 4 people), reporters also anchored our reports. Which meant they had to be good journalists AND have good on-air delivery. A tough compromise at times.
I wonder if technology like 11ElevenLabs’ speech synthesis will (is) changing this. The audio below is a CNN story “read” by one of their voices. (see previous post for more on this technology)
(Press release) Kay Henderson, the dean of the Iowa Capitol press corps and long-time guest panelist on Iowa Press, will be the next host and moderator of the Iowa PBS public affairs program. Henderson replaces David Yepsen, who retires from the Iowa Press desk on September 10, 2021. Her first formal broadcast as host will be Friday, September 17.
“Kay is already a member of the Iowa PBS family,” said Molly Phillips, executive director and general manager of the statewide public television network. “She has capably subbed as host and has been a regular second chair at the Iowa Press desk. She’s participated in countless campaign debates over the last three decades. We couldn’t ask for a stronger, more esteemed and experienced journalist to continue the Iowa Press legacy.”
Henderson first appeared on Iowa Press in October of 1987. For the past 20 years, she has been the national political director for Learfield news networks in Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota and Wisconsin. She has served two terms as president of the National Association of State Radio Networks’ news directors group. Henderson was hired by Learfield in 1987 as a statehouse reporter for Radio Iowa, a statewide news and sports network serving more than 70 commercial radio stations. She’s been that network’s news director since 1994 and will remain in that role alongside her new weekly assignment at Iowa PBS.
“It’s an honor to be invited to take on this new role,” Henderson said. “Watching Iowa Press hosts Dean Borg and David Yepsen guide the program over the past 34 years has given me a glimpse of the responsibilities ahead. I’m humbled by the opportunity and excited about the task of helping Iowa Press move into its fifth decade of service to our viewers.”
Henderson received the Iowa Broadcast News Association’s 2002 Jack Shelley Award, an annual recognition of “outstanding contribution to the cause of professional journalism.” The list of Shelley Award recipients includes the late Dean Borg, who retired as Iowa Press host in 2016, and the late Dan Miller, the long-time Iowa PBS general manager who was an Iowa Press producer early in his 37-year career with the network.
“After three decades of Iowa public affairs coverage on radio and on Iowa Press, Kay Henderson is the backbone of political journalism in this state,” said Andrew Batt, Iowa Press senior producer. “Our viewers have found Kay to be a trusted source for news and information throughout annual legislative sessions and nearly 20 election cycles.”
Henderson’s first salaried job in journalism was a three-month summertime stint as managing editor of the Lenox Time Table, the weekly newspaper in her southwest Iowa hometown. In addition to her work in Iowa broadcasting, Henderson has appeared on the PBS NewsHour, NBC’s “Meet the Press” and ABC’s “This Week” as well CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
Delightful visit with Allen Hammock this morning. Allen and his “cyber twin,” Dan Arnall, guided Learfield’s early internet efforts. L-R: Allen, Mays, Lear.
In the late 90’s I played a small part in our company’s early efforts to get on “the information highway.” We went all-in on an idea called AdActive. Proving, once again, that nothing ever dies on the Internet, I found the following on ClickZ. (1998)
Straylight in Seattle launched AdActive, a software product that allows existing banner ads to provide advertisers information on end-user brand perceptions, letting marketers target future messages based on individual responses.
Designed to support one-to-one relationships between customers and companies, AdActive works with a Web site’s existing ad delivery system or network to extend the traditional banner ad, the privately held company said.
Users are offered a number of options to tell advertisers what they think of the product or brand being presented without being taken away from the content they are viewing. AdActive then records the response so that it can be aggregated to provide detailed brand/product perception reports and used to more effectively target future ads.
“AdActive allows Web sites to realize new revenue by giving advertisers the ability to interact directly with consumers,” said Allen Hammock, technical director for Straylight’s AdActive Product Group. “Advertisers will also be able to look at what people think about their brand and products while giving Web surfers the ability to actively shape their online ad experience without registering or giving up their online anonymity.”
AdActive features a response bar, a small footprint Java applet, allows an individual to pass along positive or negative responses to an ad, contact an advertiser directly or even cancel an ad from being shown again.
The app gives advertisers the ability to respond to individual consumer brand perceptions with new advertisements or to refocus their efforts on consumers who chose not to respond at all.
AdActive is designed to work with NetGravity’s industry-standard ad delivery system, AdServer. The software is priced in a tiered structure based on a site’s traffic and computing resources.
Friend and former coworker O. Kay Henderson was on the Meet the Press panel this morning. Kay is the news director of Radio Iowa, a state radio network I helped create back in the late 80s. Kay’s first job out of college was reporting for the network. A few years later I had the good sense and good fortune to promote her to News Director. Nobody knows more about Iowa politics than Kay.
Tonight’s PBS Newshour featured a segment that included an interview with my friend and former co-worker, O. Kay Henderson. I’ve known Kay for 32 years and — coincidently — she’s mentioned in 32 posts on this blog. I think I can safely say there is no one alive today that knows more about politics in Iowa than Ms. Henderson. It’s the only job she’s every had. She started covering politics while she was in college and came to work for Radio Iowa when she graduated and has been doing it ever since.
I found this clip languishing in my flickr account. Barb was doing some (legal) work at a psych facility that had closed and made off with a straitjacket. We share a sense of humor. I was never able to put the thing on but persuaded co-worker Christie to let us buckle her up. I hope and assume that there are more humane restraints today.
“The merger of Learfield and IMG College is complete. […] Combined, Learfield-IMG College owns the multimedia rights to 55 of 65 schools in the Power 5 conferences and more than 200 schools in all, giving one company an unprecedented bundle of rights to sell in the college space. […] The merged company is believed to be valued at more than $2 billion.”
Found this note among my few remaining paper files. Always feels a bit strange to find a piece of typescript even though I used a typewriter for 20 years. I wonder how this bit of history would be preserved today. The note would almost certainly be digital. A text message (IM) or an email. No reason for anyone to print it so if they kept it at all it would be one of thousands (millions?), lost in a cloud. One might argue it will have a longer digital life but something is lost. [Bob Priddy remembers Mary Phelan]