A Milwaukee TV anchor from a past era, John McCullough, died Wednesday after collapsing at his South Bend, Ind., home over the weekend and not regaining consciousness, according to Channel 4.
News of the 77-year-old anchor's passing led Wednesday's 10 p.m. newscast on his old station, Channel 4, where he was the news anchor from 1967 until 1988. He continued offering commentaries and election analysis for the station until 1991.
McCullough comes from an era where anchors – and newcasts – were far more serious and focused far more on traditional hard news and less on the softer features that fill today's newscasts. He had a particular interest in reporting on politics.
Channel 4 is collecting viewer condolences and reminiscences of McCullough at condolences@todaystmj4.com.
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.
