If you see a familiar face around town over the next few days, you may be moved to wish him "better tomorrows," the sign-off he used for years as Channel 12's anchor.
It's Jerry Taff, of course, and more than four years after he retired, he's back in town for only the second time. He'll be inducted Friday into the Milwaukee Press Club's Media Hall of Fame, along with eight other veterans.
At 69, Taff sounded robust in a telephone interview, talking of all the volunteering he's doing in and around his home in New Braunfels, Texas.
"I moved here because it was in Texas, but it was a German town," said Taff, a native Texan.
But don't ask Jerry about the state of TV news. When he retired, he really retired.
"The last newscast I saw was the last one I did," he said. " I didn't know about Hurricane Katrina until the next day, and I didn't know who got elected president until a couple days later."
Now, he looks at the MSNBC headlines now and then on his iPhone.
"I am probably to most under-informed person in America," he joked.
By the way, his one previous trip to Milwaukee came when he sought a diagnosis for a throat problem after getting countless different diagnoses in Texas. In the end, it wasn't serious and things improved when he shaved 40 pounds off his frame.
These days, he doesn't talk to tens or hundreds of thousands of people the way he once did as a newscaster.
"Now, the things I'm doing I'm dealing with one person. There's no difference."
He volunteers at the Alamo and at the visitor's center in New Braunfels, among other places. And Taff said he regularly runs into folks from Wisconsin who remember him for his more than three decades in the anchor chair.
"It's almost like nothing really changed," he said.
But one thing did change. When he was an anchor, a call to a local official would be returned promptly. A year or so ago, he called one about an issue he was having.
"He still hasn't called me back."
Despite that return to the ranks of the average citizen, or maybe because of it, Taff sounds like a happy retiree.
"I don't miss it at all," he said. "I don't feel guilty about having money in the bank every month. Social Securtiy is never gonna pay me back all the money I sent them."
And then he quotes the lyrics to a song, "Do It," by Jesse Winchester.
"But you do it 'til you're sick of it. Do it 'til you can't do it no more."
And Taff adds, "Then you quit."
THE OTHER INDUCTEES: Joining Taff will be Channel 6's former general manager, Andy Potos, and the late Al Kalmbach, a prominent area publisher.
A number of my former colleagues at the old Milwaukee Journal and the Journal Sentinel are going into the hall of fame, including three deceased veteran journalists, long-time courthouse and police reporter Dave Doege, business reporter Mildred Freese, and longtime Journal reporter Constance Daniell. Also entering the hall of fame are three retirees: former senior editor Barbara Dembski, photographer William Meyer, and reporter, columnist and editorial writer Greg Stanford.
THE RETURN OF ROBERT FEDER: A year after he took a buyout and left the Chicago Sun-Times, media columnist Robert Feder, maybe the best in the business, has resurfaced at Chicago Public Radio's Vocalo, where he'll be writing an Internet column.
Writes Feder "I look forward to redefining my old broadcast beat, while expanding the scope of my reporting to include print, the Internet and whatever else comes along. Best of all, every reader will be welcome to offer instant feedback."
Hmmm, sounds like a trend.
ON TV: People.com has the scoop that Milwaukee's Molly Malaney and Seattle's Jason Mesnick are engaged. The Grand Rapids native, who's been working in Milwaukee for Kohl's for the past few years, was Mesnick's second choice last year on ABC's "The Bachelor," and the "reality" TV relationship has been going along ever since.
- The CW has picked up "Vampire Diaries" and "Melrose Place" for full-season runs, Michael Ausiello reports.
- Fox has pulled "Dollhouse" off the schedule for November sweeps, a sign the show may be near death.
- The first 13 episodes of Fox's "Glee" will be out in DVD form by the end of the year, a pretty quick turnaround.
THAT'S OUR CONTESSA: You have to feel bad for former Milwaukee anchor Contessa Brewer after she had one of those embarrassing moments that can happen on live TV. She was introducing the Rev. Jesse Jackson on MSNBC yesterday, when she called him the Rev. Al Sharpton.
The priceless moment of video when Jackson reacts to being called Sharpton follows below.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
