Mel Leavitt Was A Newsman Like No Other - Though Others Bear Some Of His Qualities Submitted By N.O.V.A. July 2005 Times Picayune 08-13-1997 ************************************************* Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Who will carry the torch? Mel Leavitt, who died Friday after a long bout with cancer, was a rare breed in television news, a reporter equally skilled in gathering facts and fashioning stories out of them, a jack of all beats and master of all media - TV, radio, print. Given a little more time, cyberspace no doubt would have been next. In his absence, we're left to mull the same question we asked a couple of months ago after the funeral of another great TV yarn-spinner, Charles Kuralt. Who will preserve the legacy? The truth of the matter is, like Kuralt, there probably will never be another Leavitt. You'd have to take some of the best qualities of his '90s counterparts to capture the remarkable versatility Leavitt displayed over the course of his career - 40 years of news, sports and feature reporting at WDSU, WVUE, WGNO and WYES. Not to mention a couple of books, an award-winning radio nostalgia show and roughly 30 years' work as host of "Prep Quiz Bowl." Like Ronnie Virgets, he was a writer first and a reader second, blessed with an eye for offbeat characters, an ear for local lore, and a gift for word play. Like Angela Hill, he never tried to hide his reverence for his adopted hometown. Like Jim Henderson, he refused to dumb down his sportscasts. Like Richard Angelico, he had a nose for news, and the toughness to ferret it out. Like Alec Gifford - his former WDSU and WVUE co-worker - he had a sense of, and respect for, history. Like Bob Krieger, he understood language, and how to say more with less. Like Norman Robinson, he was essentially a self-made journalist, having learned his craft and developed his voice on the street and behind the mike, more so than in any classroom. Like Ed Daniels, he crossed over from the anchor desk to the game show set without missing a beat - and without sacrificing his credibility. Like John Snell, he was a tireless worker and a dyed-in-the-wool Cardinals fan - so much so that longtime Cards announcer Jack Buck, an old friend of Leavitt's, planned to pay tribute on Monday's KMOX game broadcast. And like a lot of local TV legends, the medium eventually abandoned him. Leavitt's last full-time TV gig was in 1979, when WGNO named him news director. Nice title, but one problem: WGNO didn't have a news department at the time. He produced and starred in a half-hour magazine show - "Mel Leavitt's Magazine," a precursor to WGNO's later magazine series "Real New Orleans" - then retired to more or less full-time writing and public speaking. His last television exposure came courtesy of WLAE, where Leavitt, Pie Dufour and John Chase were co-hosts of a series of monthly historical specials, "Mel with Pie & Chase," in 1986. WLAE, it turns out, was the perfect venue for Leavitt's brand of storytelling. He may have helped pioneer local TV newscasts but he wouldn't have been happy about the way they've turned out - slickly produced, cliche-riddled infotainment shows designed to showcase the storytellers instead of the stories. We'll never know how many stories died with Mel Leavitt. What we do know is that his search for leads never ceased. Last week, as Leavitt lay on his death bed at Touro Infirmary, his daughter Linda could only shake her head in amazement. "He was interviewing all the nurses," she said. The night her father died, Linda Leavitt Bell, a public relations professional based in Pasadena, Calif., was on the phone, making sure the reporter assigned to the obituary got his facts straight. Mel Leavitt would have considered this the ultimate tribute. Eight hours after his death, Linda didn't have to wonder what he was up to. "He's probably up in heaven right now," she said, "interviewing God."