The last of the line

In March, the Vermont House honored the last full-time news director on a commercial radio station in Vermont. He wrote his first news story while working at Springfield's WCFR in the 1980s.
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The last of the line WTSA’s Tim Johnson earns recognition from the Legislature for more than 40 years on the radio Share on facebook Share on gmail Share on blogger Share on print More Sharing Services 18 Originally published in The Commons issue #248 (Wednesday, April 2, 2014). This story appeared on page A1. By Olga Peters/The Commons BRATTLEBORO—The last full-time news director on a commercial radio station in Vermont, Tim Johnson Arsenault — known on the air as Tim Johnson — has served the Brattleboro area for 40 years. “Pardon me, I might get a bit misty here,” said Johnson during an interview at the WTSA radio station on Putney Road. Johnson rarely speaks about himself as, he said, it makes him uncomfortable. He also describes himself as “thin-skinned.” Colleagues, meanwhile, describe him as generous, compassionate, and sensitive to the needs of his community long after the microphone is turned off. Johnson, a longtime music lover and newshound, started his career at WKVT, also based in Brattleboro, in 1973. Stopping briefly in Springfield at WCFR during the 1980s, Johnson in 1997 took over the news director chair at WTSA from Larry Smith, and there listeners heard his upbeat voice serving up information on selectboard meetings, floods, fires, and interviews with community members. The Vermont House honored Johnson with a resolution to mark his four decades on the radio. Brattleboro’s House delegation — Mollie Burke, Valerie Stuart, and Tristan Toleno — offered the resolution that Burke read during the Annual Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting on March 22. Johnson said that in his tenure the news audience has changed how it gathers information. Attention spans have shortened, we all consume far more media than we ever used to, and people have multiple places to find news — whether it’s through broadcast, print, or the Internet, he said. Journalism, he said, is “a lot more of [an] around-the-clock job, if you let it be.” He added that he puts in the time because he wants to feel proud of the news he broadcasts. A short workday means arriving at the radio station at 4 a.m. and leaving 10 or 11 hours later. WTSA Station Manager Steve Cormier said Johnson doesn’t “rip and read” news from a wire service, but rather “puts his feet to the street” in covering events and conducting interviews. Cormier said that once, virtually every radio station had someone like Tim Johnson. Now he’s the only full-time news director left in commercial radio in Vermont. In October 1973, Johnson, then a Brattleboro Union High School senior, landed a part-time job at WKVT, and since then he’s found that radio earned its reputation as a primary avenue for communicating local news in the Brattleboro area. He explained that the area is unique in the world of news media. We lack a local commercial television station and, because of how media markets are divided in the United States, southern Vermont is considered part of the Boston market. That leaves Windham County with few sources for true local broadcast news. Johnson left the Brattleboro area in 1981 to take a job at WCFR in Springfield. During a disk jockey shift one Halloween, Johnson got wind of a candy tampering incident in town. He quickly wrote the incident up and broadcast the news item. This quick reaction marked his transition from music to news director, he said. In the mid-1980s Dave Underhill of WKVT offered Johnson a job in Brattleboro. During his career, Johnson has covered topics across the local news spectrum, from interviewing political candidates to reporting on court cases, Fourth of July parades, and natural disasters.