((Brian's Note: Peggy Phillip and I have both been in TV news for a long time and as a result, we know a lot of the same people. She and I started trading e-mails a couple of months back and when I knew I would need a strong bench of guest bloggers, her name came to mind.  Peggy has 30 years in the business. She worked in Miami when Hurricane Andrew hit and headed up a newsroom in Tulsa at the time of the Oklahoma City Bombing. She is currently the news director of WMAR in Baltimore, but has also held major market managerial positions at WMAQ Television in Chicago, WHDH Television in Boston and WSVN Television in Miami. Peggy was raised in Wagner, South Dakota and attended both Northern State University in Aberdeen and St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota.))

  I didn't know it then but I began to fall in love with television journalism in front of a small set in my parent's home, just north of Wagner. It was fed by an antenna on the roof which mostly only received the NBC and ABC stations. Sunday nights, after the supper dishes were washed, my siblings and I would tussle for spots on the floor in front of the TV so we could watch 'The Wonderful World Of Color' (Disney's early foray into total world domination of media), Bonanza (Little Joe, so cute!) as a family.

 Until the fifth grade, I attended a one-room schoolhouse with a nadful of nearby neighbors. One chilly day Ms. Uecker answered the telephone that rarely rang and sent us home for the day. I remember being shocked at the end of the short (less than a mile) walk home to find both my parents inside the house intently watching TV. My father's 30th birthday would pass unnoticed as the black-and-white flickering images of a coffin, a young boy standing at attention and a nation in mourning filled the following days.

 For a while, it seemed like all the news was bad. Just a few years later, I recall hearing thje somber tones of newsmen on TV once again. I learned about Dr. Martin Luther King who had been shot in Memphis. And then, just weeks later, Robert Kennedy, was killed just after his victory speech in California.

 Sometimes, however, the TV brough awesome images. During the moon landing, my sisters and I ran back and forth from the living room to the yard so we could peer up into the gigantic sky, trying to see the astronauts.

 TV brought us Dudley Doo-right and Roger Ramjet and Fireball XL5. It was Kernel Korn every afternoon on the Mitchell station with perhaps the most perfect call leters ever- KORN. It was the far away war on network news ("Good night David""Goodnight Chet and goodnight for NBC News") and the hog futures on the local news ("From the north, east, west and south comes the news in sight and sound:) which I often watched with my dad.

 TV provided me with the social grease I needed- whether it was pretending to get the jokes on Laugh-In and trying to be as cool as Peggy Liption on Mod Squad.

 Television in the 60s and 70s educated, entertained and inspired me so I left my home state in 1978 to chase jobs in TV news. My vocation was born while I attended Northern State. My first job in broadcasting was a weekend DJ job at KKAA "Big Country" radio. Then I moved across town to KABY-TV where I produced local commercials. I especially liked writing for Habichts department store. It was at the little station on Highway 281 that I truly fell in love with the potential of TV news. Channel 9 was still an NBC affiliate and I recall the day a young Tom Brokaw stopped by to say hello. The sports guy taught me to shoot, process and edit 16mm film and during vacations. I read copy ripped from the AP  printer during the Today Show cut-ins. I was hooked and was desperate for a job as a reporter.

 Thirty years ago this December, I moved to Reno and relentlessly pursued an opening at the CBS station. I worked my way up from studio camera operator to reporter (I was much thinner and cuter back then). I discovered that what I really like to do is run things. Whetheer it's my farm child upbringing or birth order (aren't all oldest kids bossy?), I found my place in newsroom management. We moved to Miami and I was in the Hurricane Center when Andrew roared ashore. In Tulsa, I learned firsthand about domestic terrorism as my young newsroom struggled to cover the aftermath of the boming at the Murrah Building. Since the mid-90s, I've had stints in Boston, Chicago, Memphis, Syracuse and now Baltimore. I still love news and I still love television even as our business tries to figure out it's place in the new media world of digital, networked and computerized information dissemination.

 I can't wait to see what the next challenge will be!

((Brian's Note: Peggy is an inspiration to a lot of us who work in the business. She has not become jaded, which is to her credit. I think she's a fantastic person and a great journalist. Feel free to leave a comment below or send in an e-mail by clicking here.))