Media – March 2020
How long has Pat Cassidy been delivering us the news on the radio by āthe dawnās early light?ā
āThe alarm clock has gone off at 2:30 am for over 40 years,ā he says with a laugh. āI go to bed early. The bottom line is that I start going to bed around 6:30 or seven at night. I read. I have the double dark curtains and the white noise machine, but you gotta get your six or seven hours of sleep if you want to do a good job.ā
Itās probably one of the reasons why Pat is one of the most trusted news voices in Chicago. Heās our modern-day Walter Cronkite.
āOh, I wouldnāt go that far,ā he says humbly. āJohn Hultman, who preceded me in this job, is one of my heroes. Heās anchor emeritus at this station, and Iāve worked with him a number of times. Hard to find a more trusted voice than his. Bill Cameron at WLS is someone I really admire. Heās a reporter, not an anchor, but heās really good. There are a lot of others. The reporters and anchors hereāmy co-workers are top-notch; [like] my fellow-anchor Felicia Middlebrooks. This whole staff is excellent. Itās nice of you to say that, but Iām certainly not the only one. Iāve just been around for a long time.ā
One of the reasons that WBBM is so trusted is because it takes a village to put on every show every day, and the morning show staff is large and dedicated.
āZach Weber is our morning editor,ā Cassidy says, giving us a verbal tour of the newsroom, āand he took over from the legendary Jim Benes a few years ago, and those are big shoes to fill. Heās a young guy, but heās a quick study, bright, creative, and works very hard. Heās really the last person to get the information to us. There are our reporters out on the street in the morning like Bernie Tafoya and Mike Krauser and various others. We have news writersāKen Kosek and Joe Bartosch are the primary ones. Thereās quite a conversation off-airāitās a lively newsroomāand we have occasional disputes about stories, and where they should go, or if we should do them at all. Weāve got desk assistants taking the feeds. Theyāll do phone calls to double-check with the fire department and police to double-checkāthey follow up news leads. We always verify. And some individuals specialize. Len Walter is our business anchor, and he has his own sources. Josh Liss is the one who handles sports. Beau Duran is our traffic reporter in the morning, and he has a producer Dan Frank, and they work amazingly hard. You should see their room back there. They have screens and cameras all over the place, and they take it very seriously. Traffic is an inexact science because it changes so quickly, but they work hard at making sure they have the best informationāand the most recent information available. Itās a team thing. Felicia and I are the final editors and make the final decisions, but there are so many others that are part of this.ā
In this era of āfake newsā and āopinion journalismā and social media memes, itās difficult for the consumers to find an outlet they can trust. Pat Cassidy sympathizes, but his consumption of news hasnāt changed too much over the years, despite the many changes in the media landscape.
āI think the traditional mainstream sources are still the most trusted, and they should be. For me, they are still the best way to get information: News radio, television networks, the big newspapers, the places that have staff vetting, and following up to get the stories as right as they can be. Twitter and Facebook donāt vet. Youāre really taking your chances getting information from these other sources. Thatās not to say that itās all untrueābecause itās not. But you just donāt know. Rumors get started, stories get spread, and some of them turn out to be flatly untrue. As a news consumer, I tend to stick to more conventional sources. Iām on Twitter, and I do follow it, but again I look at the original source and use that as a guide. Is the public better served by having all these sources out there? Probably. But buyer beware. Itās still the wild, wild west on the internet. Consumers need to be vigilant that they are getting information from reliable sources.ā
Pat has been doing this job for a long time but has also done just about everything else in radio. He has worked all kinds of formats, including some that seem like strange detours. He was with WMAQ for twenty-five years through several formats and worked with the likes of Mort Downey Jr., Chet Coppock, Tim Weigel, and Jerry Taft. He met one of his best friends, Mitch Michaels when he worked with him at WKQX. Pat was the best man at Mitchās wedding. Cassidy was also the only white on-air employee of WBMX during the early part of his career. He even had a stint as part of Mancowās show at WLS about a decade ago.
āThat was my career midlife crisis,ā he now says. āI scratched the itch and then returned. ā
Weāre lucky he did. Pat Cassidy gives Chicago the news every morning on News Radio WBBM 780 AM and 105.9 FM.
