The Wendy and George team
Something that has never happened before will take place at Flathead Valley Community College at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 21. It may not seem a big deal to the average citizen, but it is big to me.
Through a hunch, happenstance and wonderful fortuity, I hired my daughter Wendy to “help” in the News Department at KOFI Radio in 1990. She had no experience but was willing to try. In 20 years there, she won more top “news programmer awards” from the Montana Broadcasters Association and for “news gathering” from the Associated Press than anyone else in this state.
In all those years as a team, I cannot recall on instance where either of us spoke unkindly to the other, nor were there any “testy” disagreements. This is all the more remarkable when you know how stressful that work can sometimes become and ... how many times I scolded her during parenting years.
Besides earning a fine reputation in the broadcasting business, Wendy, like her father, was soon in demand as a speaker, emcee and panelist; however, we have never appeared together. That is finally going to happen as part of the FVCC President's Annual Lecture Series on the 21st, discussing our combined 78 years of news gathering.
As a lead into that event, I have found one little “glimpse of the past.” Following are “Wendy's notes” from a presentation she made at the 1992 Montana Broadcaster's Convention in Helena.
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Good afternoon. First of all, I want to thank you for asking me to join the panel today. I've been in the radio business just over two years now, but they've been two very “compact” years, and I hear it never really slows down, so I'm learning as I go.
The (first) tape I brought today, which I'll get to in a moment, is a daily law enforcement report by my boss (and father) George Ostrom. I chose that because we call all agencies in Flathead County, along with the sheriff's departments in Lincoln and Lake counties, every single morning, and on the average day, it can be very dull, talking about the DUIs, bar fights, barking dogs, cows in the road, that sort of thing.
So we spice it up a little. We do sometimes add our own brand of humor when deemed appropriate. We have a few, I guess you could call them “philosophies,” at the station. One, “you can be interesting without sensationalizing. You can inject humor and still be credible. And you can show emotion and still be professional.”
I'm using our law enforcement report as an example because it seems to be a particular favorite among the listeners. We don't use names unless it's a felony crime, which some stations do and some don't. Anyway, we have several ways of introducing George's report. There is “crooks and courts,” “cops and robbers” and, of course, “evildoers.”
Before I play it, I should say that everyone has their own style, and you need to assess personalities before knowing “who can get away with what.”
As most people know, George has been in the business a long time, and in his words, “I'm over 60 and entitled to an editorial comment or two.” To use an example, when he reports on a domestic abuse case, he won't say a “man” was beating up his wife. He'll say a male because, if the allegations are true, George feels the guy's not much of a man. Well, anyway, here's an example.
(Tape ... 1 min. 55 sec. ... out) What was going on there. ... I should probably add that on truly serious matters, we're straight as an arrow ... or at least I am.
Concentrating on feature stories, we always try to go to a quote from “normal everyday sources” rather than getting a standard report from a “designated spokesperson,” a law officer, etc. We find that it's much more interesting to hear unrehearsed, sometimes subjective but always unpredictable, laymen.”
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That was part of Wendy's 1992 presentation. We hope to see you at this month's community college lecture series.
G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.