For the first time in more than 30 years, Quad Cities public radio fans won’t be treated to the mellow tones of Herb Trix or hear his delivery of the day’s top news. WVIK’s news director was expected to step away from the microphone and into retirement on Friday, Sept. 15, after signing off at […]
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For the first time in more than 30 years, Quad Cities public radio fans won’t be treated to the mellow tones of Herb Trix or hear his delivery of the day’s top news.
WVIK’s news director was expected to step away from the microphone and into retirement on Friday, Sept. 15, after signing off at the Augustana College-based NPR station he first joined in 1987.
Along the way, Mr. Trix also has served as host of such popular programs as “All Things Considered” and “Midwest Week in Review.”
For nearly 40 years he has delivered information to regional radio news junkies, first in 1984 at what was then WHBF Radio. The 70-year-old also is one of the deans of the modern-day Quad Cities press corps and has long been a familiar presence at area news events.
In the end, his departure – which included a sendoff by friends on Saturday, Sept. 9 – will be as low-key as the man himself despite a long and storied career that saw him witness and share events of historical local and national importance.
His journalism career began early when, as an intern with Congressional Quarterly in 1974, a young Mr. Trix was taken by a reporter to sit in on part of John Erlichman’s testimony during the Watergate hearings that led to President Nixon’s resignation. Mr. Erlichman, a member of the president’s inner circle, would later go to jail on charges including conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury.
Mr. Trix’s radio roots were planted three years later when the suburban Detroit youth found his way to Rosewell, New Mexico. There he spun records as a country-western disc jockey at the commercial station “KRSY, your super-kicker in the Pecos Valley” in 1978. From there, his WVIK biography said, he went to an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas, where he “wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport, Illinois.”
After that, Mr. Trix earned a master’s degree from Sangamon State University (now University of Illinois Springfield). Its Public Affairs Reporting program also is where he got his first taste of public radio as an intern at WSSR (now WUIS) in Springfield. “I didn’t care about the master’s degree, but I really liked the placement record,” he said of the PAR program that led him to WHBF Radio. He remained there for a time under a new owner after new federal rules forced radio and TV stations to split up.
From there he went on to WVIK where he remained for decades and training young interns and reporters along the way. One of them was Augustana College graduate Kai Swanson, who today is special assistant to Augustana’s president, and the current host of the station’s “Saturday Morning Live!” program.
“I was WVIK’s morning news host when Herb joined the station in 1987, and it still amazes me how much I learned from him without Herb ever being overt in teaching his vastly less experienced colleague,” Mr. Swanson told the QCBJ.
“I think anyone who has ever worked with Herb would tell you how extraordinarily easy it is to work with him, mostly because of his ability to produce world-class journalism, and to do so with such apparent effortlessness.”
Mr. Swanson added: “He’s been a great mentor to so many people, including me, but among the most memorable chapters for me are the summer of 1993, when he left on vacation just when every newsroom in America wanted a live remote on the Great Flood (thanks, Herb!). Next was 1995 when my daughter was born prematurely, and for a two-week span he made it possible for me to keep working while spending as much time as possible at the neonatal ICU in Peoria (thanks, Herb).”
What first drew Mr. Trix to public radio and kept him there?
“It just seemed like there was more time to do news,” Mr. Trix recalled. When he first got into news radio he said commercial broadcasters lived by the motto: “If it bleeds, it leads.”
At public radio, he said, listeners get more than the police and fire report. For example, stories like a Bureau County, Illinois, town that was trying to save its grocery store or a truck full of pigs tipped over on the highway. “That’s the stuff” that resonates with people, he said, which often led him to ask at news meetings “What is our puppies and kittens story today?”
The news he’s covered, of course, was often far meatier than those unexpected, off-beat or bizarre “Hey, Martha stories.”
They included covering the Iowa caucuses, which he said “always reminds me of the New England town meeting; the kind of good old days of citizen democracy and standing with candidates.”
He recalled sitting on the floor in people’s living rooms watching the give and take between candidates, and seeing voters stand up on caucus night, like a particularly heated battle he witnessed between Bernie Sanders supporters and Hillary Clinton supporters.
“One of my favorite stories is sitting with Rudy Guiliani in Ross’ and as we were sitting there – me and two or three other reporters – and we’re in the booth in the old Ross’,” Mr. Trix said. “Somebody brought him a Magic Mountain and he just looks at it and says, ‘No!’ ... One of the guys whispered in his ear and so he took two bites for the photo op.”
Then there was a trip to the Quad Cities by President Bill Clinton. “I remember begging the Secret Service so I could go to the bathroom at Central High School when Clinton was there because you know when the president comes you’re locked down,” he said.
Local politics also were part and parcel of his long career.
“One of the people I really admired all those years was Lane Evans,” Mr. Trix said. Not because of his politics. “It was just that he was very dependable. He had three core principles he always stood for,” he said – labor, family farms and veterans.
He also admired longtime Illinois State Sen. Denny Jacobs “just because he’s fun and he’s honest. People would say to him, ‘what do you think about reapportionment or patronage?’ and he says, ‘I believe in more jobs for Democrats.’”
Mr. Trix also enjoyed hosting “Midwest Week in Review,” which he called WVIK’s “low-cost version of Washington Week,” and asking questions not just about what reporters wrote, but why they wrote it. “I also wanted people to know that these big stories that people are writing don’t just happen in 10 minutes,” he added. “Maybe it took you six months.”
Politicians weren’t Mr. Trix’s only brushes with celebrity. He interviewed Hal Holbrook, whom he admired, and Kurt Vonnegut. “He was very sort of what you’d expect; sort of a gentle soul and gentle delivery but very, very strong opinions,” Mr. Trix said.
During his career, he’s also witnessed a communications technology revolution.
“It’s been interesting to see the technology change, but you know, what you do is the same, you just do it differently,” Mr. Trix said. “I used to edit tape with a razor blade and a grease pencil and now I do it with a mouse and Adobe edition software but it’s the same process. But it’s a lot better and fewer scars.”
Other advantages include agendas being available online rather than having to drop in and badger the city clerk. And if, say, John Deere makes a major acquisition, Mr. Trix said he can look that company up on the Internet to better inform listeners.
Now that Mr. Trix has officially hung up his microphone, what’s next for the longtime broadcaster as he joins wife Diane and dog Augie in retirement?
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about some things, but I haven’t really committed to anything,” he said. “You know, I don’t want to retire on Friday and go to work on Monday. I’ve got some things I thought about, we’ll see what happens.”
