By Ed Otte

“The proverbial gift of gab is something I do well,” 7News anchor Mike Landess said in response to a question about his longivity and success. He understated the reason.

Landess, who will retire Aug. 31 after a 50-year career in broadcasting, was featured in a Fireside Chat Aug. 13 at the Denver Press Club. The program was sponsored by the Colorado Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Landess is an SPJ member.

7News and Denver 8 TV taped the Fireside Chat for broadcast at a later date.

The recipient of more than two dozen Emmys – including five for best anchor – Landess also has earned five Edward R. Murrow awards and he contributed to the winning of a Peabody Award in 2013 for KMGH’s wildfire coverage. He was inducted into the Heartland Chapter of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences Silver Circle in 2008.

Landess has served as 7News evening newscast anchor since 2002. His first experience in the Denver TV market was a 16-year stint beginning in the mid-1970s when he teamed with Ed Sardella at 9News. SPJ board member Doug Bell, who introduced Landess, said Sardella remembers his former boardcast partner “for his even temper and his gift for diplomatically sardonic understatement. We were good to fair for all those years but we were better than most.”

That too is an understatement. On May 8, Denver Post television critic Joanne Ostrow wrote: “The duo was unmatched, anchoring the highest rated late newscast in the country, at times claiming a 51 share. (These days a 14 share wins at 10 p.m.) Their heyday was at a time when local TV news was not challenged by the Internet or proliferating cable-TV programming.”

Landess acknowledged changes in broadcast journalism. “The first time the Broncos went to the Super Bowl, the whole town was orange. It was a more innocent time. Ed Sardella likes to tell the story when he received a death threat because someone sent him a blue-and-orange taco and asked him to eat it on air. The guy called Ed and Ed explained he didn’t eat the taco because it was orange.”

He cited other changes in TV news. “We’re an industry that has always been defined by technology. That (he pointed at a TV camera) and Twitter and Facebook made it possible to cover the floods last September.

“There’s a new twist to broadcast journalism every time a new toy comes along. All of these things have evolved. There isn’t a manual on how to use all of this in reporting. We learn as we go.”

Former Rocky Mountain News television/radio critic Dusty Saunders said, “I remember all of the complaints about happy talk in TV journalism. Do you think there’s more or less of that today?”

“I think there’s less of it today,” Landess said. “We’ve pretty much put a stake in it in our station. We want to give more stories, more coverage. If it got out of balance – too much – it was silly.”

Former Denver Post reporter J. Sebastian Sinisi asked about the future of print journalism.

“It’s changing but there’s still an important place for it,” the broadcaster said. “I read a story recently that said Millenials don’t have the same attachment to paper – all paper, not just newspapers – and I think that’s affected newspaper readership. They do everything on their iPads. There has to be a marriage of those two. I’m an analog guy in a digital world but this (he held up his smartphone) is just like the backyard fence in the 1940s and 1950s.”

Landess was asked what will save TV news. He pointed to 7News reporter Keli Rabon as a representative of “the new breed of journalists. They do such good work. Keli’s rape stories are an example.”

Rabon and photojournalist Jason Foster received a 2014 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in January for their series of investigative reports about sexual assaults in Colorado. News director Jeff Harris and Rabon accepted the SPJ Region 9 First Amendment Award in April for the 7News “Contrary to the Public Interest” series that examined problems with Colorado’s open records laws. She is an SPJ member.

Rabon, who joined 7News in 2012, acknowledged the support she has received from Landess.

“I will always remember the way I felt the night of my very first KMGH story,” she said. “Of course, I didn’t want to embarrass myself, but I also wanted to prove that this ‘kid’ was worthy of being on the same team as such seasoned journalists as Mike Landess and Ann Trujillo. After my story, Mike kindly introduced me from the anchor desk to our Denver audience that night — which was an honor in itself — but when the broadcast was over, he walked by my desk, smiled, and said something to the effect of ‘That was a hell of a story, kiddo. Welcome to the team.’ I was on Cloud 9 the rest of the week.

“As I’ve taken on tough stories during the last two years, Mike has always exuded that same level of confidence and cordialness toward me. When people ask me, ‘Is he as nice of a guy in person as he seems on-air?’ I can say with confidence that yes, he absolutely is. And I will always be grateful for the way Mike made me feel – as a colleague, as a journalist, and as a person.

“I have the utmost respect and appreciation for him. Mike will certainly be missed, not just by his colleagues at 7News, but undoubtedly, by Colorado and beyond.”

That connection to viewers is vital, Landess said, in television journalism. “The key to this is relationships. Relationships to the town, the people you cover. Anchors are more than readers. People want a relationship with the person telling them the news.”

This year marks his 40th as a primary news anchor. Among his awards is an Emmy while working at WXIA in Atlanta for his live coverage of the bombing of Atlanta’s Centennial Park. He won another Emmy at WTTG in Washington, D.C., for 16 hours of live coverage after the 9/11 attacks.

That represents a lot of time in TV studios.

“As I come up on my retirement, one of my children asked, ‘What are you going to do when you’re no longer Mike Landess?’ I’ll get to ride my motorcycle more, finally get to go to Sturgis. I’m a music nut. I’ll get to go to concerts — in the evening.”