“What got me into television in the first place was the fact that I loved attention, the center of the stage,” writes recently retired WCCO anchor Don Shelby in a new post on Minnesota news and analysis site MinnPost.
Shelby stepped away from the WCCO anchor desk in November after 32 years with the CBS O&O.
Reflecting on his career in journalism, in which he helmed WCCO’s 5, 6, and 10 p.m. newscasts for decades, Shelby says that it was a constant desire to learn that drove him. In his MinnPost piece, he likens this desire to an addiction.
“I am an addictive personality. I have been addicted to tobacco, alcohol, getting engaged (five times),” he writes. Through journalism, he also became addicted to “learning things.”
He also admits that this drive often got the best of him:
I loved approval and I loved to perform. That’s where the learning took a turn for the worse… the worst. I became a blow-hard, know-it-all.
The image would stay with me throughout my career. I understand. But, the truth was, I was so damned happy to know things, and so proud of the fact, that I couldn’t keep it to myself.
Shelby will be a regular contributor to MinnPost, writing a post per week.
Here he is bidding farewell to WCCO: