By CHARLYNE BERENS
J Alumni News editor
As an anchor for KMTV-3 in Omaha for 15 years, Trina Creighton wanted to make a difference. Now she’s hoping to inspire her broadcasting students to strive for the same goal.
Creighton joined the broadcasting faculty this fall and is teaching two sections of advanced reporting. “I love it,” she said.
A native of Des Moines, Creighton earned a secondary education degree from the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls and taught speech, drama and composition for five years in Waterloo, Iowa. “I liked teaching then, too,” she said.
But, watching Connie Chung on TV one night, Creighton was inspired to try something different. “I could do that,” she said to her husband. And within a year, she was doing that.
She broke into broadcasting at 50-watt, black-owned radio station KBBG in Waterloo, one of the first black-owned stations in the nation to go on the air to serve a small community. The station has since expanded and is “huge,” Creighton said.
When her husband’s job took the family to Des Moines, Creighton went to work for KRNT Radio there. Then she moved to WHO Radio in Des Moines and then to WHO TV.
“I had my interview at the coffee machine,” she said. She knew the TV side of WHO had an opening, so she started dressing up a little more at work. Radio people, she said, tend to dress casually, so she thinks the fact she was wearing a suit the day she ran into Phil Thomas, the TV news director, caught his attention.
“He said, ‘We’ve got an opening. Are you interested?” Creighton said. “I said, “Sure.’”
She interviewed on a Sunday afternoon and convinced Thomas she could do the job, “keeping in mind that I had no idea what I was talking about.”
She got the job and struggled to learn as much as she could as fast as she could. “That year was one of the worst of my career,” she said. “I didn’t know the terms. I didn’t know how to get interviews. I was such a novice. I was baptized in fire for a whole year.”
It took her a year “before I wiggled my way into on-air stuff,” first as a general assignment reporter. Then she realized that staff members who had more “face time,” time in front of the camera, made more money. So she talked her way into the weather girl job and did that for a few years. And then she talked her way into an anchor position, first in the morning, then at noon and then at 5 p.m.
After five years with WHO, Creighton moved to Omaha when her husband was transferred again. She interviewed at all three television stations and took the position at Channel 3 where she worked for 15 years as an anchor.
Her specialty, though, was getting exclusive interviews on big stories. “I was known and respected for that,” she said. “If it was a tough interview to get, I was going to get it.”
One of her most satisfying interviews came several years ago after an off-duty police officer foiled a bank robbery and was hit by multiple bullets in the ensuing scuffle. The officer was a real hero, Creighton said, but he didn’t want to do interviews with the press.
“He was a big, shy cop — not a limelight person,” she said. “Everyone wanted to know what happened from his point of view. Everybody wanted that interview,” including all the Omaha television stations, the Omaha World-Herald and some national publications.
Creighton got the interview.
“I worked that story every day,” she said, calling and visiting with the officer or his wife, telling them how an interview could benefit the community and letting them know she, too, was proud of what the officer had done. Finally, he consented to do the interview.
“It was great, riveting stuff,” Creighton said. “He took you there. He almost made me cry when he said he had thought he was going to die.”
Creighton left Channel 3 last March and now is teaching broadcasting students the skills to do the kind of quality work she came to expect in her days in the profession. “To me, it’s like running a newsroom,” she says of her work with the reporting classes. “It’s a lot of work. It’s a pretty big challenge.”
Jerry Renaud, chair of the broadcasting department, said Creighton is meeting that challenge. She is a boon to the department and college in several ways, Renaud said.
For one thing, “She brings very recent knowledge of the business,” Renaud said. For another, “She has a great amount of energy, which is wonderful in the classroom. She’s very excited, and she gets the kids excited. There’s a real infusion of energy into the reporting classes, which has been great.”
In addition to her teaching, Creighton is supervising Amanda McGill, a broadcasting major, working on a television entry for the Hearst Journalism Awards Program. “She’s so conscientious and prepared,” Creighton said of McGill. “She brightens my day.”
The entry involves two pieces, one about David Rice, who has been on Nebraska’s death row for 30 years, and how groups are still trying to free him, believing he was falsely convicted. The other is about the responsibility of high school newspapers.
The topics reflect Creighton’s concern that journalism should make a difference.
She believes young student journalists will find success and satisfaction if they can achieve that goal.
That’s part of what Creighton is trying to pass along to her students.
“You should try to be honest and compassionate at all times. Remem-ber, the people aren’t there for you to get the big story. And you’re not the story. Don’t forget your motives.”