The 2008 inductees into The Press Club of Cleveland’s Journalism Hall of Fame: Tom Meyer, Jane Temple, William F. Miller and Pete Cary. (West Life photo by Kevin Kelley)

City’s first black TV reporter joins Press Club Hall of Fame
By Kevin Kelley
Westlake
Published Nov. 19, 2008

When riots erupted in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood in 1966, the news department called Pete Cary, news director at black radio station WJMO-AM, to help them cover the story.

Cary didn’t appear on camera, or even get paid. He later realized that he had only been asked to facilitate interviews with Hough’s black residents.

But two years later, the station’s news director called. This time, the call led to a job, and Cary became the city’s first black TV reporter.

Cary was one of four journalists inducted Thursday evening into the Press Club of Cleveland’s Journalism Hall of Fame at a dinner at LaCentre Conference and Banquet Center.

“Receiving this award is like icing on a good cupcake,” Cary told the gathering of about 150 of the region’s most prominent journalists, publishers and producers.

“The road, of course, was very tough,” Cary said. He persevered, he said, by keeping his head high and “keep on keepin’ on.”

Cary, who attended Glenville High School, credited his family and neighborhood with setting good examples. Broadcasting became his goal in 1949 when, as a member of the Army choir performing in Okinawa, a lieutenant suggested that he get into radio.

“That’s how it all began,” he recalled. “And I kept that dream.”

The winner of 54 Emmy Awards, Tom Meyer recalled that in the late 1970s, he once shared a desk at a Nashville TV station with a young reporter named Oprah Winfrey. His career was going well, having exposed a corrupt governor and covered the death of Elvis Presley.

Meyer moved to WJW-TV in 1979. Cleveland proved to be filled with good news stories, he said. The city was heading into default, and it was the age of battles between Mayor Dennis Kucinich and Council President George Forbes.

“I think it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” he said of his move here.

After an introductory clip showed Meyer exposing a sidewalk hot dog vendor’s unsanitary practices — including dropping wieners on the ground and then selling them to unsuspecting customers, the investigative journalist quipped, “I hope everyone finished eating.”

“After all these years, I’m still very excited about going to work. I’m very excited about my job,” said Meyer, who now works at Channel 3 News after spending several years at WOIO-TV. “And I still feel that I have a lot to learn.”

His Hall of Fame induction, he said, indicates that some people think he’s headed in the right direction.

William F. Miller, a journalist for 51 years — 42 with The Plain Dealer — worked in nearly every area of the newsroom, serving as general assignment reporter, suburban editor, assistant city editor, labor editor and social sciences writer.

But Miller is perhaps best known for his coverage of the city’s various ethnic communities, as well as his reporting on the restoration of Playhouse Square.

Miller said he was especially proud to join his late brother Pete, a photojournalist who worked at Channel 3, in the Press Club Hall of Fame.

“Not bad, quite frankly, for two paper boys from New Kensington, Pa., who started out delivering newspapers in the slums of that town,” he said. “We had two houses of prostitution on the route to give you some idea that it wasn’t the most sterling place to be.”

Miller said his newspaper jobs led him on an interesting life.

“To sum it up, my 50 years as a journalist has been an exciting, rewarding life,” Miller said. “Meeting people from all over the world, traveling the globe, having the opportunity to interview people from all walks of life about their ideas, their philosophies, their hopes and dreams and failures and accomplishments.

“It was a great ride.”

Jane Temple, longtime executive producer for WEWS’s “The Morning Exchange,” was inducted for turning local TV talk shows into appointment viewing.

Temple compared being a producer to being a construction worker who builds an edifice.

“You also write questions,” she explained. “You add powder to shining noses. You’re cheerful. You’re up-tempo. You make coffee — a lot of coffee.”

After being interviewed on the air by WEWS’s Fred Griffith for an educational organization she was working for, Temple decided broadcasting would be a good career to go into.

She soon applied for a job at WMMS when the rock station was in its heyday.

“It was a time when people were looking for a woman,” she said. “They literally hired me on the spot. They fired me a couple months later, which was probably deserved.”

But she learned a lot about news and broadcasting during her brief time there, she said.

Later she was hired as an associate producer at WEWS, where she eventually became executive producer of “The Morning Exchange” and “Afternoon Exchange.”

Cleveland has taken its knocks over the years, Temple noted.

“But one thing we’ve always had is great media,” said Temple, who now works as promotions and continuity director at ideastream, the company that runs public television and radio stations WVIZ and WCPN. “Every phase of media — print, electronic, TV, radio. I think we should all be proud of that. We all benefit, as viewers and as professionals.”

In his welcoming remarks, Michael Settonni, president of Broadcast Media Ideas, which produced video vignettes of the inductees, said the Hall of Fame Class of 2008 has something to teach today’s young journalists.

“Our Hall of Fame journalists would rather cover a presidential summit at the Hilton in Paris, and think it’s more newsworthy than covering Paris Hilton,” Settonni said. “We know that we chose this profession because we believe in the noble founding principles and practices of what the job of journalist is.”

Rich Osborne, publisher of Ohio Magazine, noted that times have been tough recently in the journalism business, as many newspapers and other news organizations have drastically cut staff. But it’s still an exciting time to be a journalist when the profession can expand to use new forms of media, he said.

It’s also important to recognize and study the work of accomplished journalists such those in the Press Club Hall of Fame, he said.

Terry Pluto

“These are the people who elbowed their way into closed-door meetings they weren’t invited to so they could be our eyes and our ears and hold government accountable,” Osborne said. “They’re the ones who posed the probing questions to recalcitrant politicians and insisted on getting and sharing the real truth. They’re the people who brought the world to our doorsteps each morning, and to our living rooms each evening, and did so with elegant language and careful thought.”

Plain Dealer sports columnist Terry Pluto, a member of the Press Club Hall of Fame, received the first Chuck Heaton Award, named in honor of the former PD sports reporter and columnist who died in February.

The planned induction of Plain Dealer writer Elizabeth Sullivan was postponed until next year due to a death in her family.

On the Web:

• Press Club of Cleveland
• Biographies of 2008 inductees
• 2008 Journalism Hall of Fame program
• West Life article about 2007 Hall of Fame induction ceremony