The catch-all Ron Millennor blog post

Last week I gave a few good Ron “Rufus” Millennor stories, but there were some fantastic comments from Rufus that just didn’t quite fit into any category from last week.

I’ll share them along with any funny Rufus memories I have that I may have left out last week (those that are shareable, of course). The one that most prominently sticks in my mind is one that I’ll expand upon in a few weeks: the tragic death of St. Xavier football star and Notre Dame signee Matt James.

“When local people die it’s always tough,” he said, referring to the Friday night in April when phone calls began barraging all of us at Fox 19.

“When Matt James died it was tough,” Rufus said, pausing, before adding “The way the business is now where a lot of people want to get information now, rather than waiting and being right…. When you’re dealing with somebody dying, especially a teenager, again, I go back to being old-school, I’d rather be right than first. My bosses probably wouldn’t want to hear that, but when you’re dealing with life and death, it’s different.”

And what he said is something I agree with. When I first received the news it was in the form of a text message from one of my co-workers. I had no reason to believe him, but I also had no reason not to. I simply told him, “Don’t mess with me, this is about to become news.”

Due to Facebook and Twitter, though, it already was.

“It was chaotic. In this era of social networking, people were Facebooking that he had died and Tweeting that he had died,” Rufus said. “There are no established guidelines for dealing with that. There’s no handbook out that says Twitter and Facebook are now accredited sources. So, you’ve got to go with your gut.”

“If it’s somebody you know that’s Facebooking or Tweeting it, you’re a little more comfortable, but if it’s a kid saying ‘So-and-so died,’ I really need confirmation from somebody else.”

Rufus noted that it was a story that he personally wanted to make sure he could hammer down the facts before he sent Zach Wells onto the set to deliver the sad news.

“You can make a mistake about Carson Palmer being traded or retiring or whatever,” he said. “Sure you have egg on your face and you can come back and say, ‘We made a mistake. We got bad information, a bad tip.’ But when you make a mistake about somebody dying, that’s terrible.”

“Those stories for me are the toughest.”

As I said last week, Rufus is full of fantastic stories from his two decades within the business. But his advice is top-notch as well.

Even though I’ve worked with him before, I asked him what was the best advice he could give to those seeking a job in local television. Boy did he have answers.

“I would say make sure you’re prepared for a lot of different things,” he started with. “People get into the business thinking that they’re going to walk in and be on-air immediately, and that they’re going to walk in and make a lot of money. The reality is that if you want to be on air it’s a tough struggle and you’re going to start in a market that is small and work your way up and not make a lot of money.”

He continued with, “And be prepared for change because 20 years ago, change didn’t come very often in the TV business. Equipment would change, formats might change every so often, but now, you’re dealing with some kind of change in technology every six months. Whether it’s shooting video on an iPhone,” as he picked up his newest ‘toy,’ “or Facebook or Twitter or whatever the next social media thing is going to be, you have to be ready to adapt.”

But the best advice he could give, in my opinion, was this: “You get into the business because you love it, you love what you do. So don’t go in with expectations that you’re going to be a star, that you’re going to get rich that you’re going to be running with a lot of athletes, because athletes don’t want to run with you.”

And although that was icing on the cake for me, I’ve always wanted to know what Rufus’s feelings were on being on camera for the first time. In June last year he started doing his own on-camera work for Fox 19. I was there the first night he did his own sportscast.

“You obviously want to do the best job you can,” he noted. “I’ve seen George Vogel and Thom Brennaman do their first sportscast. Everyone is a little bumpy at the beginning, but I’m sure the best in the business—Bob Costas and Dan Rather—have had rough patches at the beginning.”

“Nobody is good off the top.”

And it’s true. I completely sucked the first time I did anything in front of a camera, and mine was all on tape for a short story on Moeller’s volleyball team. Even though it’s become slightly easier and slightly less chaotic for me to do my own standup work, it’s going to be a long time before I’m completely comfortable in front of a camera.

When Rufus began in the late 80s, everything was on video tapes, a foreign concept to most youngsters in the business today.

“As kind of an older school guy, I know how to use computers, but I was still a little scared,” he said. “I was very concerned about it because I never want to be the weak link in the chain. So when I heard we were switching to digital editing, and they set up some test stations down in the basement here, I stayed overnight and just played with it.”

“It didn’t take long to grasp the basic concepts of how it works before you realize, ‘Wow this is great. This is easy.’ There was a lot more anxiety now than there should have been for me. It turned out to be a fairly easy transition for me. Now I love it.”

He’ll probably kill me when he reads this, but I still get a kick out of watching Rufus hunt and peck his way on the keyboard when he writes.

From the first day I met Rufus through all the stories and knowledge I gained on that day in February when I went to interview him, I’ve learned the right way to do things. Just as Rufus said he learned from the best during his college internships, I’ve pulled plenty of knowledge away from Rufus, and all the other folks I’ve had the pleasure of working with at both Fox 19 and WCPO in the past two years.

I’m sure this spring will be no different. Thanks for reading the stories on Rufus, I hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed writing them. Have a good Thursday everyone…
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Oh, and check Fox 19’s Sports page later tonight for a story I’m working on about the man who waved the green flag on Sunday. I feel with all the promotion I’m doing for this story it better be a good one. I’ll try to not disappoint.