Ro Brown, trailblazing sports anchor scores big with Lifetime Achievement awards
3rd September 2024 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
A local media legend is being honored for his tenured career in New Orleans sports journalism.
Romalice “Ro” Brown, the former WDSU sports director and first Black on-air sports anchor in New Orleans, has received much-deserved accolades from both of the Crescent City’s professional journalism organizations.
On August 24, Brown received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Press Club of New Orleans, and, on August 27, the New Orleans Association of Black Journalists (NOABJ) announced that Brown is one of its four 2024 Legacy Award recipients.
Brown, a New Orleans native and graduate of John F. Kennedy High School and Loyola University of New Orleans, vividly remembers the day he first got the urge to try broadcast journalism: July 17, 1965. At the time, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society featured a program called Reading, Enrichment, and Recreation. The 13-year-old Brown participated in that program. One of the program’s outings was a field trip to WDSU’s studios on Royal Street. Something clicked within Brown, and he knew what he wanted to do. There was just one catch.
“At the time, there were no Black people doing that on TV,” Brown said. “It was kind of far-fetched to even think about it.”
Brown credits two men with helping him on his path to a history-making career: Warren Bell, who was New Orleans’ first Black weekday prime-time anchor at WDSU, and Ed Harding, a former sports director at WDSU.
Bell, who was a union steward at WDSU, strongly advocated for the station to have a minority trainee. Brown became that trainee and got to work on writing copy for news stories. When Brown was still in his early days at WDSU (he worked there from 1976-80 before leaving for Lake Charles a year before returning to WDSU from 1981-2002), Harding encouraged him to follow projects in which he thought locals would be interested.
One of these projects was covering high school women’s sports. While women’s sports have received much more attention in recent years, it was unheard of in 1978 when Brown began doing it. The NCAA Women’s Final Four would not exist until 1982. Brown remembers even women asking him why he was covering those events. He also said the coverage of high school boys’ sports was often limited to schools like Jesuit and Holy Cross. He covered those schools, but he also covered schools like Carver and Landry and a then little-known school called John Curtis. In 1983, he would win a Louisiana Associated Press Award for Best Sports Series for his five-part series on the Black student-athlete.
While Brown remains passionate about sports and still writes for the local website Crescent City Sports as well as serving on hall of fame selection committees for the New Orleans Saints among others, he spent his final three years at WDSU covering the education beat. Brown was motivated by inequities he saw in the local education system.
“We were getting to the point where if you couldn’t pay to learn to read and write, you would not learn how to read and write,” Brown said.
An education story Brown remembers well was his feature on “What is a charter school?” He said at the time people told him charter schools stood no chance of ever becoming a dominant form of public education in the city.
Charisse Gibson, president of the New Orleans Association of Black Journalists and an evening news anchor at WWL, described Brown as both influential and supportive. Her first contact with Brown was when he sent her an encouraging note to thank her for the work she was doing.
“He encouraged me to continue to talk about these topics and to keep doing great work. He has always been encouraging towards the next generation whether they were entering his career field or not,” Gibson said. “Ro has not only served as a sportscaster but a teacher to so many. With his calming spirit, I’ve stood on the side listening to him speak and hanging on to his every word. He speaks with passion, care and dedication. Those who have had the pleasure to be in his presence or to be interviewed by him, immediately felt cared for.”
When asked what advice he would give to aspiring young broadcast journalists, Brown said “Read, read, read, and write, write, write.” He also spoke of the values of being prepared and being accurate.
“The audience is intelligent,” Brown said. “A large chunk of your audience will notice if you say something inaccurate.”
Brown remains passionate about representation in the media. He said great strides have been made in getting women anchors, and Black women anchors, involved in broadcast sports journalism. But he noted that most of the Black men doing broadcast sports work now are former athletes. He wants to see studios take the initiative to recruit and develop Black male broadcasting talent outside of former pro athletes.
When asked how he felt about his recent awards, Brown said they have motivated him to want to do more. He said he hopes to work on a historical series on Black prep sports in New Orleans.
This article originally published in the September 2, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
