WDBJ7 Roanoke News and Weather NRV Lynchburg Danville | Veteran broadcaster and journalism professor Ron MacDonald passes away
Member Center:
Ron MacDonald in Roanoke not long after Channel 7 signed on the air.
Soon MacDonald was sharing a studio with Irv Sharp and the Top of the Mornin' Gang.
MacDonald told News7 he counted his former students working in newsrooms around the country as his greatest accomplishment.A boyhood paper route sparked Ron MacDonald's interest in journalism, and he followed that calling for more than 50 years.
The veteran broadcaster and journalism professor died Thursday at his home in Lexington.
Ron MacDonald was a radio reporter in Vermont before he joined WDBJ. He arrived in Roanoke not long after Channel 7 signed on the air, and soon he was sharing a studio with Irv Sharp and the Top of the Mornin' Gang.
"It was a very exciting time, and a time when I think all of us on the station staff, everybody from the secretaries on up to the manager, had the sense of adventure," MacDonald said during an interview in 2001. "We're pioneers, we're doing this thing together for the first time, kind of thing... and it was really great."
He left Roanoke in the late 60s, for the journalism department at Washington and Lee University.
In an academic career that spanned more than 30 years, he chaired the department, taught countless classes and supervised more than 700 interns.
When he retired from teaching in 2001, MacDonald told News7 he counted his former students working in newsrooms around the country as his greatest accomplishment.
