Memories

There was a time when one could actually turn on Denver radio stations and listen to some news -- five minutes at a time and twice an hour at that.
One of the people who made that happen was murdered over the weekend in New York. His name was George Weber, and he worked for KOA Radio about 25 years ago.
We crawled around a few late-night crime scenes and fire scenes in those days. We were far from best friends. But he was always polite and eager to help the rookies.
Weber loved Philadelphia, his hometown. He was aggressive in what he was doing, far more than most.
His wry sense of humor was something to behold. Once, he said, he stuck his microphone down a gopher hole to see if he could get some reaction to a decision by a city leader.
I'm not sure something like that would have made it on air. But what it did show was creativity in a medium that has long since lost its ability to be creative. A future colleague tried the same thing. He took an otherwise boring council meeting that was full of price tags and costs and finished it with "the most important numbers of the evening" ... the score of a World Series game.
Weber loved news, and he was good at reporting it. Inquisitive. Smart. Politely aggressive.
That's worth remembering.