It is now my pleasure to introduce our alumni speaker Art Holliday. A native of St. Charles, Missouri, Holliday received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Mizzou. He currently serves as a news director at KSDK 5 on your side in St. Louis, Missouri.
Mr. Holliday. Okay, before we get started, I need a favor from the graduates of the class of 2022. I need you all to stand up. Thank you, thank you, well done. I am a proud graduate of the Mizzou School of Journalism and I'm the father of a Mizzou grad.
M-I-Z. Z-O-U. Faculty, staff, parents, relatives, and you graduation crashers who just did caps and gowns, we are here to celebrate the J-School class of 2022. Make some noise.
And hello to our online audience as well. The ceremony is being live streamed and we're glad that those folks are joining us virtually. Now in J-School, I'm sure that at least one instructor advised you to avoid...
cliches in your writing. I tell my young reporters all the time if you're about to write a familiar phrase that you've heard more than ten times write something else more original. You don't have to read between the lines to know that you can't judge a book by its cover, and that original writing is an uphill battle.
But if you play your cards right, the grass is always greener on the other side. No cliches today. So if I slip up and use a well-worn graduation phrase like, follow your dreams, that's lazy writing. I should have come up with something more original. So you will not hear me say, follow your dreams.
If you do, hold me accountable. So here's what I was like back in the 1970s at Mizzou. I was and continue to be an introvert. Then I was painfully shy and quiet. So me, standing up here and talking to you without being nervous, you're looking at a miracle.
So much so that sophomore year, when I told some students in the Mizzou dining hall that I was a broadcasting major, several people actually laughed out loud. You never say anything, one guy said. So to all the introverts in the house, there's no cure, but there is hope.
So it's time for some show-and-tell. I brought some photos about my journalism journey. I don't need to tell you parents that this is a big day. These photos represent graduation day for my daughter Taylor 13 years ago here at Mizzou.
As the girl dad of a Mizzou graduate, let me speak on behalf of the parents in the audience today. It wouldn't kill you students to be a little nicer to your parents. I'm not judging, but you were once teenagers.
Hug them extra hard today and tell your parents how much they mean to you. I suspect that you 2022 graduates took a lot of photos during your J school journey. Well we didn't have cell phones back in the dark ages when I was a student here and I didn't take enough photos.
This is my only J school photo. Channel 8 KOMU when I had hair and a glaring lack of fashion sense. I'm grateful this photo is in black and white because if it was in color you might lose all respect for me. In 1979 after three years of my first job in Oklahoma my hometown TV station KSD TV in St. Louis came calling.
Actually it was a J school classmate Rick Gevers who called me with the job tip. He was working at Channel 5 and he called to let me know that there was a weekend sports opening if I wanted to come home. Sports director Jay Randolph and Ron Jacober decided to take a chance on a 25-year-old sportscaster who was greener than St. Patrick's Day beer.
That drawing on the screen was a newspaper ad my first year at KSDK, and we actually were always first. So I turned down a job in Tampa, Florida, which wasn't easy because it was a bucket list destination. Warm weather city by the water.
Young and single going to the beach. But coming home was a no-brainer because of Austin and Cleo Holiday, my late parents. I thought I knew how much it would mean to them to be able to watch me on TV, but I completely underestimated the joy that it gave my parents.
I know now that career decision was a gift to them. Decades later, when their final days were spent in a nursing home, I was glad that I was well-known in St. Louis. We should all be afraid of how our loved ones are treated in nursing homes these days. I can't prove it, but I believe my parents got better care because I was a TV newscaster who made regular visits.
Coming home to St. Louis also meant I was a sportscaster who got to cover my beloved St. Louis Cardinals. And over the years, I've been fortunate enough to cover, I believe, the counts right. I think I've covered...
Six World Series involving the Cardinals. Now, if you want to have a laugh, Google Art Holiday Vince Coleman to see my 1980s viral video live shot. It's taken on a life of its own.
So much so that Vince Coleman mentioned me by name in his red jacket Cardinals Hall of Fame speech several summers ago. Now, many of you have plans about how your career will turn out. I had plans. This photo was my plan.
I thought I was going to be a sportscaster my whole career. Maybe get a shot at network sports. None of my plans involved being a morning newscaster or a news director. So, write down your plans in pencil, not ink.
Because as I found out, the journalism business may have its own plans for you. But here's the good news. Like you, I am the result of the Missouri method of journalism instruction. Mizzou gave me the ability to learn a lot of different things and reinvent myself. Sportscaster, photographer, news anchor, executive producer, general assignment reporter, news director.
Our J school gave me the foundation for a long career that did not go according to my plans. 1989, I was called to the GM's office. I had never been to the general manager's office and I thought nothing good could come of it.
There was fear and introspection about what I may have done wrong to get called to the general manager's office. Bill Bolster was the GM. He was kind of scary. And if you got on his bad side, you were dead man walking.
I didn't want to be on his bad side. Bolster quickly got to the point. Art, we're going to make some changes on our morning newscast and I think you'd make a good co-anchor for Jennifer Blom. Who knew that he had just created a 22-year anchor team?
Meteorologist Scott Connell was part of our team for 20 of those 22 years, and our show had a lot of success. When we peaked in the mid-2000s, we had the highest ratings in the country for a couple of years straight. And more recently, Jennifer Blom and I got the band back together for a radio show for a couple of years before I moved into management.
During my four decades at KSDK, I've had the good fortune to cover the Blues'first Stanley Cup championship, the Rams'Super Bowl run, I floated through the business district of Eureka, Missouri, while covering a devastating flood, I interviewed NBC News anchor Brian Williams in Ferguson a few days after the city erupted following the Michael Brown police shooting. When I was a J-school student, sitting where you are, I had no idea I would interview rock stars like the Rolling Stones'Keith Richards, actors like John Goodman, comedy superstars like Jay Leno, superstar athletes, and a long list of memorable characters. And on the rare occasions like this when I'm asked to talk about my career, I'm reminded of how grateful I am for finding a career that has kept me engaged all these years.
And I had a lemur crawl onto my head during a radio show. Now, I don't know if all lemurs are chill. Thank goodness this one was.
And this will forever be one of my favorite photos. So that's the end of the show and tell. Many of you graduates are quite talented. Talent is important, but so is effort.
Ten things that don't require talent. Arriving early. Being prepared. Working hard doesn't require talent. Getting the facts right and being fair to the people in your stories.
Bringing positive energy to your newsroom. Being coachable doesn't require talent. Putting the team first. Taking responsibility for your mistakes.
Challenging yourself to get better at your craft. story by story, being the solution instead of the problem. None of these things require talent, but they do require extra effort and a positive attitude, and they will all serve you well in your careers.
Every time I think about my time at the journalism school, 74, 75, 76, I think about the conversation. With my first year of J school winding down, I made an appointment to speak with Lee Wilson. who was in charge of the broadcast department.
Mostly I wanted advice on summer internships. And he said, well, there's nothing wrong with internships, but he cautioned that I wouldn't get paid and there would be a lot of grunt work. He had another suggestion.
Why don't you enroll in summer school? I'll make you a teaching assistant so you can earn some money and you can anchor 6 p.m. sports Monday through Friday to get some more on-air reps. Well, that sounded amazing to me. And while I had his undivided attention, I asked the question that may have gnawed at some of you young journalists at some point during your time here at Mizzou.
Have I made the right career choice? Lee Wilson had worked at NBC, CBS, and ABC, accumulating photographer and documentary credentials five miles long. Time stood still while I waited for his answer, because I cared what he thought about me. He could have demoralized me. Because back in the day, faculty members had no problem being brutally honest, even if it meant crushing dreams.
Wilson assured a very insecure journalism student that I had what it takes. So if Lee Wilson believed in me, then I better buy a ticket and jump on that train. And I did, and that was a turning point in my confidence. This event reminds me of why I feel so connected to the J School all these years later. I love my J School years.
And I appreciate them much more now than I did at the time. I'm still friends with some of the people I went to school with, and I followed the careers of classmates who became managing editor of USA Today, executive producer of Entertainment Tonight, and multiple classmates who made it to the network TV news level or became news directors. For those reasons and more, I'm tremendously honored to be speaking to you today because there are countless other Mizzou grads Worthy of such an honor.
Three weeks before I graduated Mizzou I was hired for my first job. KOCO TV Oklahoma City weekend sportscaster. One day in the break room a KOCO salesman asked a question I've replayed many times.
Do you think you were hired because you're black? Well keep in mind this was the first and only conversation I had with this person. Without knowing anything about me, that's how he saw me, a token hire.
He obviously didn't care that I graduated from the best journalism school in the world and worked my butt off while I was here. He just saw skin color and made assumptions based on that, something that happens every day in this country and all over the world. That incident still ticks me off all these years later because it's a pretty messed up question to ask a 22-year-old.
But... Like in many things, there was an unintended consequence. That question became fuel for me.
Because success is always the best revenge against people who doubt you or disrespect you. Do you think you were hired because you're black? Well, I said something like, I don't care, I have the job. Why don't you ask the news director who hired me?
And that's not bad for a 22-year-old. Now, my 68-year-old self... Would have a lot more to say to that guy if he asked me the same question today. In 1979, when I joined Channel 5 Sports Department, there was no master plan to work at Channel 5 for 43 years. Why would someone as young as me even think that way?
And I get asked about that all the time, including yesterday at KOMU when I spoke to some students. Why did you stay at Channel 5 so long? Well, life got in the way of my plans, as it usually does. Back in the 80s, when I was doing sports, the news director at WABC in New York asked for an audition tape of my work because they were interested in talking to me about possibly working there.
Then, he promptly got fired. So had that news director kept his job, maybe that would have changed my KSDK longevity. Bob Costas almost changed my Channel 5 lifespan. In 1990, without my knowledge, Costas convinced people at NBC Sports that I was good enough to get two live auditions to be a sideline reporter for the National Basketball Association.
A dream job. To make a long story short, NBC hired Ahmad Rashad. And as Costas has often reminded me, there's no shame in losing out to Ahmad Rashad, who had a long broadcasting career. Factually true, but I wanted that job badly, which also would have changed my career longevity in St. Louis. Now, I'll bet some of you, especially those of you who are sports fans, saw the Chicago Bulls documentary, The Last Dance, and they kept showing shots of Michael Jordan hanging out with Ahmad Rashad.
who became one of Jordan's best friends. If I had gotten that NBA job, I could have been Michael Jordan's best friend. And then I'd have an even better story to tell you today. You will constantly be reminded that journalism is a business.
Business decisions will often be made by news managers, general managers, consultants, and CEOs. Decisions that may affect you. Sometimes you benefit with a promotion and hopefully a pay raise. Sometimes you'll take a pay cut or an unpaid furlough. Sometimes you'll feel like you got screwed or underestimated.
The decisions are rarely personal, even though it feels like it. I know from personal experience. After 22 years of co-anchoring today in St. Louis, the Fox station in St. Louis finally caught up to us in the ratings.
So, in came the consultants to make recommendations on how to fix our show. And their conclusion was that Art Holiday was the problem. The consultants didn't care about my 22-year history of success, or that our morning show had a ratings victory my last month on the show. So I was voted off the island and suddenly I became a general assignment reporter for the first time 30 years into my career. It was an unpopular decision in the newsroom and the community.
So after that much time at KSDK, suddenly I had the ability to be a wrecking ball if I chose to go that route. I could have undermined the news director and been extremely disruptive. Part of me wanted to lash out and get even. Instead... I decided to be a professional who still had a job to do.
I kept my mouth shut. I did my job, supported my team and my community because it was bigger than just me. It's still painful all these years later, but it wasn't personal.
It was business. Your character will be revealed by how you handle adversity in your careers. You will never have to apologize for taking the high road, hard as that may be. One of the reasons I chose journalism is I love to write, including the occasional poem. And I wrote this poem after hearing an interview in which an aging movie director was talking about what he hoped to accomplish during his remaining years, late in life.
Definitely something I can relate to. At one point, the movie director asked a rhetorical question that many people my age ask. How many summers do I have left? How many summers do I have left? 15?
20? That's a question that's hefty. Time is deceptive. It's slow, then it's fast.
Before you know it, the future is past. Baldness, wrinkles, and scars symbolize a life that has lived all the lows and the highs. Finding joy in your life, that's the fountain of youth.
Loving and laughing and searching for truth. As you get older, you start to reflect. Did I influence lives?
Did I really connect? I now have less time to make my mark, to right my wrongs, to light up the dark. I have less time to get it right, to stand up for something, keep fighting the fight. Time is a teacher that each day is a gift, not to be wasted, but used with great thrift.
Keep having birthdays until you cannot. You only live once, better shoot your best shot. As time ticks away, I look forward and back. I still have some dreams before fading to black. Father, time is a burglar.
Years are the theft. How many summers do I have left? Now, when you're in your early 20s at the beginning of your career, it may be hard to relate to this poem, but trust me, you will. My 46 years since Mizzou has flown by. To use a sports metaphor, I'm in the eighth inning of my career.
The ball game's almost over. But there's no clock in baseball, so who knows how long the game will last. Finally, remember this. It's okay not to always have the right answer. As a newbie news director, I'm not afraid to tell people in my newsroom, I don't know.
Let me get back to you. That response will also come in handy when your parents ask, when do you plan to move out of the house? And you'll say, I don't know, let me get back to you. From the class of 1976 to the class of 2022, you and I chose the right journalism school.
We got degrees from the first journalism school and the best journalism school, which means there's an incredible journey ahead. I wish you all the best of luck. M-I-Z Oh, oh, wait a minute. I almost forgot.
Follow your dreams.