Tag Archives: Bob Priddy

Jim Lipsey

Posted on by

Jim Lipsey was one of Learfield’s first employees. He was part of the KLIK gang (Derry Brownfield and Bob Priddy) that helped Clyde Lear get the company up and running.

On Friday we got Clyde, Jim and Bob in a studio to talk about those early days and Jim’s contributions (there were many). Jim will be 87 his next birthday. I want to be him when I grow up. When I joined the company in 1984, Jim showed me the ropes of affiliate relations. It was a privilege to work with him. Here’s 10 minutes from a half-hour chat.

23 Year Pin

Posted on by

My first official day at Learfield Communications was June 4, 1984. I’ve posted on enough anniversaries that I don’t have anything fresh to add, but didn’t want the day to slip by without note.

Learfield PinA surprising number of people who were there on my first day are still with the company: Clyde, Roger, Charlie, Bob Priddy, Derry (no longer technically part of Learfield but always in my head and my heart), Greg, Clarice, Joyce… who am I missing?

The company has grown so rapidly in recent years, it bears little resemblance to the company I started with. But that is as it should be. Like that old Saturday Night Live bit… “Learfield has been berry, berry good to me.”

Thirty years of election coverage

Posted on by

The first election covered by The Missourinet (a network owned by the company I work for) was in 1976. News Director Bob Priddy orchestrated that first election night and every one since. Prior to The Missourinet, radio stations throughout the state focused on local races and relied on the wire services for news and numbers from throughout the state.

The Missourinet brought the sounds of election night from the state capitol and campaign headquarters throughout Missouri to the hometown audiences of our affiliates.

The technology has changed… and is changing… but insight and understanding Missourinet reporters bring to their election night coverage remains the focus of their reporting. Bob reflects on the past 30 years in this 10 minute video.

Found in Bob Priddy’s desk

Posted on by
  • Christopher Garbacz (Professor of Economics @ Mizzou) business card
  • 15 yards of Butler dental floss
  • Iodized salt packet
  • Free medium drink coupon from Hardees (Expiration date Sept. 1996)
  • Cut-up American Express card
  • 3-cent postage stamp
  • Children’s Miracle Network pledge card (dated June 1989)
  • Unused “I voted” sticker
  • Illinois & Baltic Ave stickers from McDonald’s Monopoly game

A) Worst-case survival game pieces; B) Things McGyver needs to make a bomb; C) Things found in Bob Priddy’s desk after he cleaned it out.

This is an inside joke that means zip unless you know Bob Priddy and have seen his desk. Thanks to Andy Rawlings.

Bob Priddy replies:

Any good archaeologist is able to take disparate remains of a culture and weave them into a coherent description of the people who once inhabited an area. The archaeologist is able to determine the approximate age of the inhabitant, the diet, the religious beliefs, and the society of his time. You did not include paper clips, which also were found in abundance and which are a valuable clue. The number of artifacts is also important, but since the site as been disturbed and the paper clips have been removed, an important piece of information will forever be open to speculation. I shall give you a few clews, however, about the person who lived there.

He was a carnivore who did not like bland diets but who took excellent care of his incisors so he could properly tear at the meat that was part of his diet. The latest artifact located is dated September, 1996, indicating that he moved from the area or perhaps died shortly after that (did you check for burial sites?). He loved children, worshipped the God John Maynard Keynes, and felt plastic was Satan’s tool for a corrupt society. Now, you may build the story from there, based on the evidence you have found.

Anniversary of first “right to die” case

Posted on by

December 26, 2005 marks the 15th anniversary of the death of Nancy Cruzan. Nancy Cruzan was a 25-year old southwest Missouri woman who was thrown from her car in 1983 when it flipped over. Paramedics found and revived her at leat 15 minutes after the crash. She never fully regained consciousness but did achieve a status that came to be called a “Persistent Vegetative State.” Five years after her accident, her family concluded she would never return to full consciousness. Thus began a long legal battle to have her feeding tube removed so she would die. The Cruzan case became the first “right to die” case to reach the United States Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 against the family.

Missourinet News Director Bob Priddy interviewed Bill Colby, the Cruzan family lawyer during the ordeal. Runs 30 minutes but it’s damned fine radio. Before the web, an in-depth piece like this would simply have been tucked away in a desk drawer.

Execution journal: Donald Jones

Posted on by

In his capacity as news director for The Missourinet, Bob Priddy has witnessed 15 executions. The most recent was the April 27th execution of Donald Jones, for which Bob produced an “audio journal” that begins as he leaves his motel in Bonne Terre to go to the prison and ends as he prepares to leave the prison about two and a half hours later. Bob telescoped the audio down to about half an hour and some segments have been shifted for context purposes (the reading of the final statement of Donald Jones, for example).

Bob was not allowed to take his recorder to the execution witness area, so he summarizes the events that took place in that approximately 90-minute span. The main voices you will hear are those of Missourinet News Director Bob Priddy, Corrections Department spokesman John Fougere, and Corrections Director Larry Crawford. Voices of various other officers will be heard as part of the process.

2004 Murrow Awards

Posted on by

One of the websites I help feed and care for won a nice award back in June. On Monday, Clyde and Stan were kind enough to go to NY and pick it up. Many of the Big Names in journalism were there: Brokow, Jennings, Rather… and our own Bob Priddy who –as RTNDA chairman– MC’d the event.

 

First and only woman executed in Missouri

Posted on by

Half a century ago, radios throughout the country were broadcasting the news that a woman had died in Missouri’s gas chamber… the first– and so far, the only –woman ever executed in a state prison. Bonnie Brown Heady of St. Joseph and her lover Carl Hall had been convicted less than a month earlier of the kidnapping and murder of a little Kansas City boy, Bobby Greenlease. Former prison caseworker Gail Hughes remembers the Heady execution in an interview with Bob Priddy.

The Biology of Typing

Posted on by

I didn’t take biology in high school. My mom called the school and told them she didn’t think I needed to take the course. Turns out she was right. But she insisted I take typing. We used real typewriters. Manuals. There were a few electic typewriters in the back of the room but they seemed too exotic and high-tech to use. Every week or so we had these “timed typing” tests to see how many words-per-minute we could type. There some kind of formula…total words minus number of errors, something like that. I quickly figured out that my best shot was to go wide open, with no regard to errors. I frequently had the best score for a document nobody could read. This was 1964 and computers and word processors were years in the future.

Twenty years later I started working with a guy named Bob Priddy. Bob was (is) a broadcast journalist, author and –in 1984– power typist. His “office” was a cramped, dusty corner of an attic in Jefferson City, Missouri. The digital newsroom was still a few years off and Bob hammered out his news stories on a battered old Royal typewriter. The floor and walls shook when Bob was on deadline. No IBM Selectric for Bob, he was a manual guy all the way. Bob “keyboards” these days. And if he doesn’t pound the keys as he did back then, it’s only because they couldn’t take the punishment.

I recently came across an article by Roger Ebert (In Cyberspace, Writing Is A Performance) that reminded me of Bob and his battered Royal.

“A few moments ago I took the L.C. Smith down from the shelf and tried to type on it, and found that I could not. It’s just so klutzy. My fingers have to travel so far and work so hard to depress a key. You have to manually return the carriage at the end of every line. You have to hit the Tab key to indent. My fingers are no longer trained to hold down the Shift key.”

I love email. I’m trying to get comfortable with Instant Messaging but it’s a struggle. Knowing the other person is sitting there (“Mays is typing you a message”), waiting for me to respond. I find myself drifting back to typing class (“Fuck the typos, I’m going for speed!”).

I don’t think they make manual typewriters any more. Seems like I read that some place. I’m tempted to add, “too bad” but I can’t say why. Sort of like me and biology.