I began my professional career over 35 years ago at two radio stations in Eau Claire, Wisc. That was when local news still required shoes, a notebook, a scanner, and a willingness to attend public meetings that drained the life from a healthy mammal.
I left journalism long ago, and my gratitude towards that decision remains sincere. Still, the job left behind a few memories — some instructive, and one involving a shotgun, a barricaded man, and a young reporter trying very hard to look calmer than he felt.
One evening during the fall of 1989, a man barricaded himself inside an upstairs apartment in Chippewa Falls and began blasting holes through the walls with a shotgun.
I stood in an alley about two blocks away with a clear view of his window. Occasionally, he peeked out, and the first time his face turned in my direction, the blood in my spine briefly filed for unemployment.
Once I learned he had birdshot in his shotgun, I relaxed because at that distance he probably couldn't hit me unless he loaded it with gravel, prayer, and divine intervention. A nearby police officer and I talked during the standoff, and he told me several SWAT officers were hidden in the darkness of the alley between me and the apartment building.
That detail stayed with me; police could've ended the standoff at almost any point if the goal had been killing him. Instead, they waited, watched, and measured every move. I was in my early 20s, and for the first time, I understood how many boxes law enforcement must check before a gun leaves its holster for real.
Modern use-of-force standards still stress de-escalation when officers can use it without increasing danger to themselves or others. The part many people miss, usually from the comfort of a recliner and a suspiciously deep bag of chips, is that restraint in a crisis often looks like inaction to outsiders. In reality, restraint takes more discipline than force.
During that standoff, the officer told me something I later repeated while calling in an update to the radio station. My editor asked one question: “Was that on the record?” I said no, and she told me to completely leave it out until somebody said it on the record.
There was no debate, no wink arrived from across the newsroom, and nobody called it “background context” while smuggling it into copy wearing a fake mustache.
Off the record meant off the record, and the story had to survive without it.
That standoff ended peacefully when the man sobered up enough to put the shotgun down and let police in. What nobody knew about was a retired lady living in the first-floor apartment. When asked later what went through her mind, she told reporters she stayed in her bathroom waiting for “that damn fool to sober up.”
Professional standards still say unnamed sourcing needs careful handling, editor approval, and a real reason stronger than convenience. Named sourcing remains stronger than unnamed sourcing, and off-the-record information carries different rules from anonymous sourcing.
A younger version of me learned that lesson because one editor cared more about getting the story right than sounding like she knew something the audience didn't. That used to count as discipline; now it feels almost quaint, like cursive handwriting, ashtrays in airplanes, and TV anchors who didn't appear to be auditioning for a cabinet position.
Another memory comes from the long fight over the Hwy. U.S. 53 bypass around Eau Claire. The debate had three options: build over the existing road, cut an inner bypass between Eau Claire and Altoona, or build an outer route east of Altoona.
Before heading out to cover a public listening session, I blurted out that the outer bypass made the most sense. It was cheaper, cleaner, and more durable over the long haul. One anchor snapped back, with the kind of newsroom sarcasm that could curdle cream, “Make sure you include that in your story.”
Point taken; the opinion belonged in my head, not in the copy.
Wisconsin eventually built the inner bypass version that became part of the broader U.S. 53 freeway alignment between Eau Claire and Altoona. And within a few years, freeway traffic on the bypass outgrew the predictions, and I've heard rumblings the state is contemplating building an outer bypass.
The old debate offered a useful lesson about power, predictions, and civic chess: the people who win the argument don't always win the aftermath. Occasionally, the trophy arrives with a maintenance bill attached.
My final lesson led to my decision to leave the profession of journalism.
On Jan. 17, 1991, Operation Desert Storm began its air campaign to free Kuwait from Iraq's invasion.
My news editor and I were making plans on how to cover the war's beginning from a local perspective. My editor assigned me to something that I couldn't accept: he wanted me to find out if there were any people in the Eau Claire area who had family in Iraq, right in the middle of the fire. He wanted me to visit them at their home and ask them for their feelings and reactions.
Even before he finished his sentence, I told him no, I wasn't going to do it. He asked why, and I told him the truth. Those families don't need any further stress added by having a stranger in their home asking stupid questions, and on a human level, I felt it was wrong.
My editor then tried pulling the boss card, saying he could make me go. That was the wrong thing to say to me; I replied that he could try, but it wasn't going to happen.
To his credit, we worked out a compromise where I simply visited several taverns and stores asking those questions.
That final lesson hit me hard. For me to become a successful journalist, I would have had to cross ethical and moral lines I wasn't comfortable with, something I still won't cross.
Journalism and I were never destined for a long marriage. The pay helped settle the matter; a general assignment reporter's starting salary in 1991 hovered around $11,000, which even in those days felt less like a career path and more like a dare.
The other problem involved my face, which has always belonged on radio. Yet those years gave me something useful: a lasting respect for restraint, sourcing, humility, and the distance between what happened and what gets reported.
I don't miss the meetings, the scanner noise, or the paycheck that arrived looking embarrassed. I do miss the challenges from my editors who asked whether the information was on the record and expected the answer to mean something. I miss the anchor who reminded a young reporter to keep his opinion out of the story.
Moreover, I miss the old understanding that reporting required limits because limits kept the work honest. A man with a shotgun taught me one lesson; a bypass fight taught me another; and a line drawn by an editor finished me off.
Somehow, all three still explain more about journalism than most graduate seminars ever will.
