Broadcaster moves on after losses

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: You're sorely missed Mr. Morrissey. : As seen in the WSJ this morning: : Broadcaster moves on after losses : Doug Moe : dmoe@madison.com : Somehow you knew that Tim Morrissey wouldn't let something like losing his job doing news at radio station WTDY-AM (1670) keep him down. After all, this is a career radio news guy who not long ago lost his voice. Morrissey didn't lose his voice like you lose your voice after yelling too much at the referees during a Badger game at the Kohl Center. : Morrissey, who until last November had been on the air pretty much consecutively for 20 years in Madison, : really lost his voice. One minute he was talking to his wife on the phone, and the next minute he was asking the family dog if it wanted to go outside -- except no words came out of his mouth. Nothing. He was as speechless as the dog. : At immediate care they took a strep test, which was roughly akin to putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. : Morrissey finally found his way to a specialist -- who just happens to be the best guy in the field in the world -- and the verdict came quickly. His vocal chords were frozen. This is not news you want to hear if your job involves programming computers or finding out why the rattle behind the glove box won't go away. But consider receiving that news if you speak for a living. Morrissey did find some solace. He reasoned that if he could survive having worked with Mark Belling, Chris Krok and John "Sly" Sylvester, he could survive anything. All this was happening, incidentally, in 2006, and since Morrissey was back on the air in time to be terminated last November, we know he recovered his voice. What he has recovered since is the sense of well-being that comes with working hard at something you enjoy. Earlier this month, Morrissey, 59, was hired by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation to assemble the content for a new Web site that will serve as an online resource for Wisconsin broadcast news managers, reporters, producers and photographers. : It's called the R. Perry Kidder Broadcast News Resource Center, after the Green Bay broadcasting executive whose start-up contribution helped fund it. : Morrissey has a six-month contract that in all likelihood will continue much longer than that. The idea is an excellent one. "I think the foundation is visionary in doing this," Morrissey was saying recently. It was last fall when the foundation formed a steering committee -- Morrissey was on it, along with people like Tom Bier from Channel 3 -- to address an issue impacting broadcast newsrooms across the state. They are getting younger, and increasingly, the veteran reporters and producers who in the past would mentor the new faces aren't around to do so. : A young reporter might simply want to know how to pronounce Rio. Or whether she can take a microphone or a camera into a courtroom -- or a hundred other things. : The site is expected to be operating by fall. Morrissey was hired Jan. 8. He's a good fit in the position, being able to draw on decades of hard-earned wisdom about news and the broadcasting business. Working in radio is like playing sandlot shortstop: the ball can take some bad hops. Most survivors have some bruises to show for it. An Oshkosh native, Morrissey worked in the Fox River Valley, New Orleans, and Los Angeles before landing at WTDY in July 1988. There he handled a variety of duties, but without doubt the most significant for Tim was hosting a morning drive time news show with a woman named Toni Denison. They became best friends, and then more than that. Toni is now Toni Morrissey. They'll have been married 12 years in June, and Toni, : after a long run as a reporter at Channel 3, now works in public affairs with UW Hospital and Clinics. : She was a big part of his support system when Tim lost his voice in January 2006. On the medical side, the UW's Dr. Charles Ford was the renowned physician who restored Morrissey's voice. : What caused the paralysis of his vocal chords remains unclear. It may have been a virus. Morrissey went back on the air in April 2006, a "scary" day, he recalls, made better by all the listeners who phoned and wrote with encouragement and good wishes. : He misses the listener interaction that comes with being on the radio every day, but the new assignment has him feeling like he is still in the game. : "In a way," he said, "I'm still in broadcasting."

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