Mike Landess

After 50 years in broadcasting, Mike Landess has returned to Tyler to finish his career where he started it.

Last Monday, he began anchoring the 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. news on CBS19.

“It’s a privilege to be back in East Texas,” he said.

Throughout his storied career, Landess, 68, has covered historic events around the country, including the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, Georgia; the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks while in Washington D.C.; deadly wildfires and floods and the World Youth Day Event in Denver.

“I love telling stories,” Landess said when talking about his favorite part of being a broadcaster. “The gift of gab is something that allowed me to do what I have done for as long as I have.”

Throughout the years, he has received five Edward Morrow Awards and 24 Emmys for his work.

Landess moved around a lot as a kid because his stepfather worked in the oil and gas industry. He was born in Houston and lived in Aruba before living in Tyler his freshman year in high school. After moving to California for two years, he returned to Tyler for his senior year at Robert E. Lee High School. That year is when he started his broadcasting career.

In 1964, he got the opportunity to work for KDOK Radio doing Sunday morning shows when he was 18. He attended Tyler Junior College for about seven weeks but after receiving news in the same week that he got a military draft deferment and a job offer at a radio station in Dallas, he left Tyler.

In 1970, he went from WFAA Radio to its TV station, which he said was his big break. “I moved from job to job, experience to experience, gaining experience,” Landess said.

In 1974, he took his first full-time job primary news anchorman in Cleveland and after three years there, took a job in KSOA in Denver for 16 years.

“My entire education was in the business,” Landess said, adding that broadcasting the news evolved with the equipment they had available.

 

EVOLVING MEDIA

He said social media is a good example of that evolution. During his last three years in Denver, he covered three historic news events — the Aurora theater shooting, the first year of deadly wildfires and flooding.

“If we hadn’t had social media, we couldn’t have covered the story affectively,” he said of the fires and flooding. “You couldn’t fly a helicopter, you couldn’t get anywhere on the ground, so you were totally reliant on Twitter and Facebook to be able to get information from the emergency agencies and then be able to disseminate it to people. … It was quite remarkable.”

Landess said evolution in social media, which has been driven by technology, is the biggest change he has seen in the industry in his 50-year career.

Questions from a journalist with a pencil and pad have changed to people getting the news within seconds of an event on social media. Landess believes that immediacy can be an enemy in many ways because it doesn’t always allow time for reporters to vet what is real and what isn’t. He believes that is where experience comes in when covering breaking news.

 

HISTORIC NEWS

While in Denver, Landess covered World Youth Day in 1993, which he said was one of the most memorable events he covered, “not for its tragedy, but for its hope.”

He met the Pope while covering Holy Week in Rome months before the Pope came to Denver for World Youth Day. The event was so important to the city because people came from all over the world following a summer of gang violence, Landess said. During the event, “it was like the whole city just took a breath for a whole week while these kids were there,” he said. “It was a remarkable and heartening time to sort of reconnect with humanity for all of the horror we cover on a daily basis.”

In 1994, Landess was transferred to Atlanta, where he was on the air for nine hours straight covering the 1996 Summer Olympics Games bombing.

While in Washington D.C. for three years, he was on the air for 16 straight hours for the Sept. 11, 2001 coverage “because it was a local story for us with the Pentagon,” he said.

In 2002, he returned to Denver for more than 12 years before he retired.

“I knew what I ultimately wanted to do was to get back to East Texas if I could,” he said.

Although he had retired, he wasn’t ready to quit.

“Not dead yet,” he said. “That has sort of become my theme. There is a lot I still want to do.”

Landess’ mother lives in the Tyler area, and he has two daughters and four grandchildren living in Longview and Texarkana so he wanted to live closer to them.

“My greatest accomplishment in my life if I were to say is not covering the Pope or 9/11 or the Olympic bombing, none of that stuff,” he said. “The greatest accomplishment is having two grown girls who are good people.”

His wife of 28 years, Maddie, also has three daughters and they have a combined nine grandchildren, he said.

Landess said he loves to report significant stories, as well as be a part of and helping a young journalist starting their career.

“It’s been a privilege to be in the business that I’ve been in for as long as I’ve been in it,” he said. “It’s a blessing to be able to continue to do it.”