Tim Scheld, who ran WCBS Newsradio, still has stories to tell

In 2024, the beloved radio news station, WCBS NewsRadio 880, ended after a 57-year run; then CBS News Radio this past May, one year shy of its centennial. Both once proud institutions, there are still people who reflexively push "880" on their car tuner when they settle in for a commute.

One of them is Tim Scheld, the guy who once ran the station.

Now Scheld has written a book (with Paul Semendinger) titled "My Front Row Seat: A Newsman's Journey" (Sunbury Press). As a longtime reporter for both 880 and ABC News Radio, Scheld covered every major breaking news story in New York City and Long Island over a packed 30-year run, and many overseas.

Scheld, 67, stepped down as 880's boss in 2022, and now teaches journalism at Montclair State in New Jersey, where he lives. Theodore's Books in Oyster Bay will host a book signing and discussion on Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. at nearby Gold Coast Forum. Newsday spoke with Scheld recently:
 

Your book -- unintentionally -- reads like an epitaph for radio news, or at least the way you and so many others once practiced it, NPR excepted.

I do think that the radio business I grew up with -- both local in New York City and then the network -- doesn't exist anymore. They don't send people to break the news the way they used to. Every reporter today has to be a multiplatform person. Use ABC News as an example. Aaron [Katersky, an ABC News Radio reporter] is also on "World News Tonight." He's doing digital reporting. He's also doing social media. I wouldn't say it's a lost art [but] it doesn't exist anymore."

Do companies have an ethical responsibility to support this kind of journalism which supersedes a financial one?

There is a moral responsibility to play a part in the community that you live in and I don't think that responsibility is being met to the extent that it needs to be. When technology opened up and democratized the media business, [people] didn't need a radio or local TV station, then the cash stopped coming in. Companies [then] spent most of their time trying to figure out how to make up that revenue, and didn't spend enough time on that moral responsibility.

For a lot of Long Islanders, the end of 880 was painful. Was killing it off necessary? If New York can have multiple sports radio stations, why not two news ones?

Not to necessarily defend [Audacy], but they were holding onto an excessive amount of debt [and] recognized that one way to get a huge savings was to lop off one of the radio stations. You needed somebody to come in and be the white knight, and there wasn't a white knight in this scenario. But did it have to happen? I don't think so. Somebody could have come up and been the hero and could have figured out a way to do news in a cheaper form, and maybe found a collaboration the way that WNYC does. [New York's public radio station has a number of partners, including Vox Media]. The community's lost a source of information and there are big elections coming up in a couple weeks. We just don't have a place on the radio to give us the information that we need on all these particular stories.

Plus, the need for radio news when the electricity goes out!

A radio station is more than just a voice coming out of a box -- it's a community [and] other media have not found a way to be that communal. For the WCBS 880 community out there, they felt that the people who were on the radio 'were talking to me, about the things that mattered in my life.' That's how we were driven [as reporters] every day. We'd go to work and say, what are the things we need to be telling people that help them get on with their day, make them better equipped. ... That's missing and that's sad. I'll tell you the one day where [former WCBS 880 reporters] were hurting — on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, because we felt so strongly about keeping up the mission of telling people what happened that day, and making sure we never forgot.