The Shadow
ROANOKE – WDBJ’s Keith Humphry is calling it quits.
After 31 years behind the anchor desk of Channel 7’s 6 p.m. broadcast, the veteran reporter will sign off for the last time May 27.
“I can’t imagine what it will be like 81 days from now,” said Humphry during a phone interview Tuesday. “I can’t seem to project myself that far into the future. I guess that’s why I haven’t done this until now.”
Humphry came to Roanoke and began work at WDBJ in 1980. He spent a year working the weekend broadcast before moving up to anchor the region’s top rated six o’clock broadcast.
That ranking never wavered during Humphry’s tenure.
“It was a little bit daunting to be handed that kind of leadership position in the ratings,” said Humphry.
While the number of viewers has been whittled down a bit due to the plethora of options available today, including the Internet, satellite broadcasting and major news networks, Humphry and the News 7 team remain at the top of the rankings.
“We’ve always had that stranglehold on local news,” he said. “But for the vast majority of my time here, the focus was for us to go out and to do the best job we could do and to keep working at what we did best and just let the ratings fall together. That’s our job and the management and sales team kept up the ratings end of the bargain.”
While that may sound like an easy task, Humphry would be quick to disagree with that sentiment.
“It hasn’t always been easy. Sometimes people just watch because they always have and I don’t know that that is a good thing,” Humphry said. “You want them to watch because you have something for them, something that keeps them coming back other than habit. I hope we’ve done that.”
A career spanning three decades covering the news in Virginia has left Humphry with two regional Edward R. Murrow awards for investigative journalism and a few memorable stories.
“I had a very cordial letter from someone local and it brought up a series of stories on the ASPCA here in town. They wound up shaking things up to the point that there was a massive reorganization within that organization,” Humphry recalled. “I guess it was for the better, but you just don’t get to do a lot of stories that make difference like that.”
A lot has changed in the news business in three decades, not the least of which is the format in which the news broadcasts are taped.
“When I first started in television, we were still shooting in black and white,” he recalled, “and we may have been the last station in the country that was.
“I was just talking to Joe Dashiell the other day about how we were still shooting film in 1981 and we were in the transition to beginning to shoot video at the time.”
In today’s digital world, “tape” is a forgotten word.
“Of course now it’s not even tape. It’s all on a little chip. It makes it the easiest thing in the world to zap and be done with in a heartbeat,” said Humphry.
Just like a fisherman, it’s the one that got away that makes for the biggest tales.
“We have, unfortunately and all too often, just lost things that go off in the atmosphere. I’ve had some great stories that just disappeared on me. Those are the kind of things you can’t replicate.
“Sometimes you can call the interviewee back and ask to do it again, but with a lot of the type of stories that I’ve done, you just can’t do that,” he said.
May 27 may not be the last time Humphry’s loyal viewers see him in front of a camera.
Humphry’s bosses have already spoken with him about doing pieces in the future, and he’s willing to entertain the notion even if he hasn’t yet figured out how to be a “part time reporter.”
“I can’t imagine how you do this job part time,” he said. “I don’t know how, sitting at home with my feet propped up, I’m going to be suddenly inspired to do some great investigative piece.
“Those kind of things come up behind you when you’re in the newsroom, with your nose to the ground and talking with the newsmakers, the legislators, the lawyers and other people who have the pulse of the community,” he added.
Humphry’s career has taken him across Virginia, the United States and even across the Atlantic to London, England, and St. Lo, France.
“I remember them telling me to get my passport and I was surprised at a medium market television station in Roanoke would be sending me overseas to cover a story,” he said.
Humphry’s plans for retirement are still vague, but it’s probably a safe bet that traveling will figure into them at some point.
“I love to travel. I’ve spent some time, not near as much as I would like, traveling around the country,” he said.
“I don’t have any plans to go sailing off into the sunset on Memorial Day weekend, but I’d love to take my kids to see Scotland. We have some Scottish ancestry and I started out there when I was in the Army. I’d love to expose them to that.”
A reporter’s job is to uncover the truth in any news story and, at heart, those stories are about people.
That’s certainly something Humphry has learned in the course of his work.
“I would like to think that so much of my career has made a difference to people,” he said.
